91��ý

Al-Farabi Kazakh National University has launched a series of open lectures by the country's leading academic scientists, dedicated to Science Day.

As part of the Science Week, prominent scientist, Candidate of Biological Sciences, Professor and academician Yerlan Turuspekov addressed the faculty, doctoral students and students.

The invited lecturer was introduced to the audience by Kuanysh Tastambek, Director of the Department of Science, noting the merits of the scientist. Yerlan Turuspekov is the head of the Laboratory of Molecular Genetics at the Institute of Plant Biology and Biotechnology. He is the author of more than 180 scientific papers and the recipient of many prestigious awards, including the Kurmet Order, the Best Researcher State Award, and international Fulbright (USA) and STA (Japan) fellowships. The scientist is responsible for the development and zoning of wheat (Sarina, Tatiana), barley (Shakhristan) and soybeans (Zara, Danelia), which have already been successfully approved for use in Kazakhstan.

The lecture on the topic "The role of plant genomics in modern crop breeding" aroused the keen interest of the academic community. The professor explained the choice of the lecture topic by the fact that it is directly related to food security and modern agricultural technologies.

"The era of genomics has now arrived. And it is developing in agriculture at a fairly powerful pace. Speaking of challenges in agriculture, climate change, which affects soil degradation, as well as the intensity of such adverse factors as drought, frost, and salinity, should be mentioned first of all. There are many geographical areas in Kazakhstan, and the specifics of growing wheat and barley are related to this. A specific breeding program is provided for each zone. Factors such as population growth put a lot of pressure on agriculture. Therefore, it is necessary to pay attention to resources, norms and technologies that would help overcome these problems. And genomics acts as a key tool to speed up the process of creating new varieties",- the lecturer emphasized.

In his lecture, the scientist highlighted in detail the challenges of agriculture, the issues of wheat and barley production in Kazakhstan, the problems of classical genetics, justified the need for integration between genomics and breeding, paid attention to the marker-mediated breeding and genome-wide analysis of the association. According to the professor, the integration of fundamental knowledge of molecular genetics into the real production sector is the key to the country's food security.

At the end of the lecture, Professor E.K. Turuspekov fully and thoroughly answered all the questions from the audience.

Press-service of 91��ý Kazakh National University