Genome Hunters Team, founded by the students of Ondokuz Mayıs University Faculty of Agriculture, Department of Agricultural Biotechnology, came in first in the “Project Category” at TEKNOFEST 2020 Biotechnology Innovation Competition.

The championship award, 15000 Turkish Lira, was presented to the Genome Hunters Team by Minister of the Internal Affairs Süleyman Soylu at a ceremony held at Gaziantep Middle East Exhibition Center.

Ondokuz Mayıs University (OMU) participated in TEKNOFEST, which aims at making a “National Technology Thrust” and transforming Turkey into a technology producing society with the slogan “National Seed Initiative”. The Genome Hunters Team aimed to contribute to the Turkish Seed Industry by using the CRISPR/Cas9 system, the most popular genome editing tool in recent years, with the project they prepared.

Stating that hybrid seeds are used in many of the products in Turkish agriculture and the production is limited due to the high production cost of hybrid seeds, Genome Hunters Team made their first move with the Project “Development of Male Sterile Lines of Tomato” through the CRISPR/Cas9 tool in order to find a solution for this issue.

Genome Hunters Team consisting of two doctoral students Zafer Sezgin and Gökhan Gökdemir has been supervised by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Musa Kavas.