Dr. Jeekin Lau
Dr. Jeekin Lau was born and raised in the college town of Auburn, Alabama. Being raised nearby a land grant university, he was constantly exposed to agriculture and academics. He did his undergraduate studies in the ”Fruit and Vegetable Production” track in the Department of Horticulture while working part time at an on-campus research station/greenhouse complex. He continued his education with Dr. Wheeler Foshee’s pesticide efficacy lab while working on a research project looking at the feasibility of using industrial sweet potatoes and its post fermentation by-products as livestock feed supplements. He then began PhD studies at Texas A&M University under Dr. David Byrne working on breeding roses for disease resistance, heat tolerance, and other horticultural traits.
As a Postdoctoral Research Associate within the Texas A&M Rose Breeding program Jeekin worked on establishing tetraploid rose populations useful for mapping rose rosette resistance while looking at other diseases like blackspot and Cercospora along with horticultural traits such as flower characteristics and plant architecture traits.
Currently, Dr. Lau is a peach rootstock breeder for the USDA-ARS in Georgia, focusing on rootstock with Armillaria Root Rot resistance and Peach Tree Short Life resistance.
