Dr. Zena Rawandoozi
Dr. Zena J. Rawandoozi, a Research Associate in the Department of Horticultural Sciences at Texas A&M University was born in a suburb of Baghdad, Iraq. She finished her undergraduate study in Horticultural Sciences at the University of Baghdad.
Zena worked for many years in the public and private sectors before leaving Iraq. She obtained a Master of Science degree in 2014 and a Ph.D. degree in Horticulture in 2019 at Texas A&M University.
Currently, Dr. Rawandoozi is working on rose genetics and breeding with a focus on establishing a high-density integrated consensus linkage map from five diploid rose families to map QTLs for black spots and Cercospora diseases and other horticultural traits. She will also be working on different ploidy-level rose populations by using various tools for genetic analysis.
In the future, she plans to continue her research in genetics and genomics to enhance and accelerate the breeding efficiency of horticultural crop breeding, as traditional breeding is time and resource-consuming.
