Dr Marian Quain

Dr Marian Quain

Ghana

Ghana CSIR

Seed & Post Harvest Division

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Work and Research

I hold a PhD in Botany with bias towards cryopreservation and plant physiology. A major outcome of which was establishment of a cryopreservation protocol for Dioscorea rotundata accession, which is of great importance in Ghana. At the BSc level I was the first student ever to use tissue culture techniques in a dissertation. My interests are in use of tissue culture tools to generate clean planting materials of vegetatively propagated crops and molecular to ls to certify clean planting materials as well as facilitate crop breeding. With a bias towards Biotechnology, I have the passion to create awareness about the technique and its application in agriculture. I have trained several high school teachers and students.

Fields Of Expertise

Botany
Plant Physiology

Research Profiles

My vision for the future of research in Africa and how I will contribute to this development

Science in Africa has been overly dependent on the Western world where they decide what we should do as they come to us with funding. As much as we do not have to reinvent the wheel, we need to have our own source of funding to do research to solve our problems. With the ambition to bring biotechnology into the research outputs in Africa, I foresee myself as a mouthpiece ensuring that research in our part of the world use cutting-edge technologies to solve problems. Through collaborative efforts I want to be seen connecting various fields of science to adequately identify problems and employ all relevant tools required for solutions both locally and internationally. African scientists have to be able to identify their research needs and have the expertise, resources, and infrastructure to solve them. I would like to be part of an initiative, which ensures that funds are available to facilitate research peculiar to solving our challenges to food security, environment and shelter serving industry and improving livelihood.