Assistant Professor, Department of Horticulture
UGA Horticulture Profile | Google Scholar | CV | ychu@uga.edu
Dr. Chu’s program focuses on developing blueberry cultivars adapted to the southeast Georgia growing environment and ornamental varieties for home gardening. The main objective is to produce new blueberry cultivars with a high and reliable crop production sustaining early season freeze and disease/pest challenges. This program also seeks to develop genomic and genetic tools for both rabbiteye and southern highbush blueberries.
Chu’s research interests are in the areas of interspecific hybridization, tissue culture, genetic transformation, pests and disease resistance, high throughput phenotyping and pan-genome analysis.
Before her blueberry career, Chu was working on peanut breeding in which she became an accomplished leader of a successful peanut molecular breeding program and an expert in all areas of molecular genetics, genomics, and breeding:
- She published over 90 peer reviewed journal articles and invited book chapters.
- She developed and applied genetic markers for host resistance to nematodes, leafspots, white mold and oil profile in the breeding program resulting in the release of five peanut cultivars through marker-assisted breeding.
- She created multiple interspecific hybrid lines with strong disease resistance and potential to improve agronomic performance of cultivated lines.
- She played a key role in peanut genome projects and coordinated the construction and analysis of the nested association mapping populations.