Graduate Students Awarded American Society for Enology and Viticulture Scholarships

Graduate students Venkateswara Kadium and Ramesh Pilli from the North Dakota State University (NDSU) Department of Plant Sciences were awarded scholarships by the American Society of Enology and Viticulture. Scholarship recipients were announced during the Society’s annual conference held June 19-22, 2022 in San Diego, California. 

The scholarships are awarded to students who demonstrate academic excellence in a major or graduate program emphasizing enology or viticulture, or a science basic to the wine and grape industry. 

Kadium successfully defended his Plant Sciences M.S. thesis, “Genome Wide Association Studies of Basic Fruit Chemistry in Cold Climate Wine Grapes (Vitis Spp.)”, in April 2022. He performed a genome wide association study (GWAS) on a grapevine population that is well adapted to North Dakota’s cold climate. Through the study, he was able to identify genomic regions that control fruit quality in the grapevine population. Kadium plans to pursue a Ph.D. at Montana State University. 

Pilli is pursuing his Master’s degree in Plant Sciences. His research objective is to determine the genomic regions controlling the cold hardiness trait in grapes. He became interested in plant breeding during his undergraduate studies and chose to attend NDSU for his graduate studies when he learned of the viticulture work being done by Xuehui Li, assistant professor in statistical genomics, and Harlene Hatterman-Valenti, professor and leader of the high value crops production project.

Kadium and Pilli are from India and are advised by Hatterman-Valenti. 

Author: Kamie Beeson
Editor: Karen Hertsgaard