Venkateswara Rao Kadium Defends Plant Sciences M.S. Thesis

Venkateswara Rao Kadium successfully defended his Plant Sciences M.S. thesis, “Genome Wide Association Studies of Basic Fruit Chemistry in Cold Climate Wine Grapes (Vitis Spp.)”, on April 30, 2022, at North Dakota State University (NDSU). His advisor is Harlene Hatterman-Valenti, a professor in the Department of Plant Sciences and leader of the high value crops production project.

Kadium performed a genome wide association study (GWAS) on a grapevine population that is well adapted to North Dakota’s cold climate. Through the study, he was able to identify genomic regions that control fruit quality in the grapevine population. 

Kadium is from Appanapalle, East Godavari, India, and earned a B.S. in agriculture at Achara N.G. Ranga Agricultural University, Guntur, Andhra Pradesh, India. He chose to pursue his Master’s degree at NDSU because he was interested in the work that is being done in Hatterman-Valenti’s research project and for the “good” curriculum focused on plant breeding and genetics that is offered in the Department of Plant Sciences.

He recommends NDSU and the Department of Plant Sciences to students who are interested in genetics and plant breeding. “The amount of research that’s going on here and the kind of faculty that’s available to guide the students are up to mark,” Kadium says. “Personally, NDSU Plant Sciences helped me tremendously in terms of gaining skills that I needed to grow in my field of study.”

In 2021, Kadium received the American Society of Enology and Viticulture’s Traditional Scholarship and the NDSU Plant Sciences Charles and Linda Moses Presidential Graduate Fellowship.

Kadium plans to pursue a Ph.D. in plant genetics at Montana State University, Bozeman.

His graduate committee included Hatterman-Valenti, Xuehui Li and Gregory R. Cook.

Author: Kamie Beeson
Editor: Karen Hertsgaard