Last week, the knights of the round table gathered to discuss their first mission to Congo. In late January 2020, both PhD researchers (Jonas and Lauren) will explore the region of Yangambi under supervision of Filip Vandelook. We hope to collect samples in 30 plots, along a gradient of forest disturbance. This will be an enormous amount of work, as the wild Robusta coffee population is widely dispersed in the rainforest. Therefore, Jonas will stay in the region for two months. Lauren however, will return to her Belgian laboratory after the first three weeks of fieldwork where she will start the sequencing of the already collected samples. The main purpose of this pioneer mission is to collect samples of as many Coffea canephora individuals as possible, to unravel the population genetic diversity of this region.
Currently, everything commences to promptly gather the necessary material for our first mission. The supervisors are arranging the administrative matters and our researchers are gaining knowledge by reading papers and learning their way around the data processing.
The future is bright..
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