Whether their time at UWA was two months or half a year, each of the six students and academics who recently visited from India and Pakistan agree: the experience has been invaluable.

The UWA Institute of Agriculture helped organise programs for the visiting scholars, which included tours of the glasshouses and plant growth facility chambers, specialised UWA labs, the Shenton Park Field Station, Centre for Microscopy Characterisation and Analysis, and more.

Image: Dr Mahantesha Banvat Nethaji Naika, Tahira Rasheed, Anamika Chandel, Hackett Professor Kadambot Siddique, Professor Jacqueline Batley, Mithraa Thirumalai, Nutan Darandale, and Dr Malu Ram.

Over five months, Sri Karan Narendra Agriculture University Assistant Professor Malu Ram said his UWA training had provided a ‘wonderful platform’ to interact with many renowned agricultural scientists of the world.

“I came here to meet highly cited researchers Hackett Professor Kadambot Siddique and Professor Nanthi Bolan and explore the modern facilities of field experimentations, laboratories and data analytics at UWA,” Dr Ram said.

I have achieved here far, far more than my expectations and will try to use this knowledge I gained to improve the research and teaching facilities of my university in India.

Dr Malu Ram

Mithraa Thirumalai is completing a PhD at the ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) in New Delhi on ‘Genome-wide association studies for key quality traits in vegetable pea’.

“After exploring the knowledge of the team and facilities at UWA, I promise that this is the best place for a student to strengthen their career in science and I wish I could be one among them,” Mrs Thirumalai said.

“Apart from the facilities, this Institute has a great teamwork and cordial relation among them, and that is my take home message.”

Dr Mahantesha Banvat Nethaji Naika travelled from Bangalore to work alongside the Institute’s Food Quality and Human Health theme leader Associate Professor Michael Considine.

During her brief stay, fellow ICAR-IARI PhD candidate Gayatri Bhimappa Kudari trained in Professor Jacqueline Batley’s lab.

“I delved into a diverse array of labs, gaining hands-on experience in RNA isolation, quantification using Qubit, and acquiring proficiency in various bioinformatic tools,” Ms Kudari said.

Anamika Chandel from IARI also spent much of her time in the Batley Lab, learning gene expression studies to support her research ‘Studies on Or gene associated developmental and hormonal changes in Indian Cauliflower’.

“I got the opportunity to meet and interact with scientists who I used to have to Google to know about them,” Ms Chandel said.

This was a delightful experience for me, just like my dreams come true.

Anamika Chandel

Tahira Rasheed, a graduate student from the University of Agriculture Faisalabad in Pakistan, said her visit to the Institute was an opportunity to build new, specialised and enriching skills in plant cloning, transformation and proteomics.

“UWA has provided an experience that exceeded expectations, fostering confidence, hope, and peace,” Miss Rasheed said.