I am working on a collaborative project (http://www.fabinet.up.ac.za/mppi/maize) to characterize the genetic basis of resistance in maize to the fungal pathogen grey leaf spot. My work is focused on identifying the genomic regions where this variation resides using disease severity data from an infected experimental population and identifying genes with expression profiles, from the same population, that are associated with these regions. Defining these regions is of interest to plant breeders for tracking the integration of desirable genetic variation into cultivated germ plasm, while their identification, and those of associated genes, is of further interest for research into the molecular pathways that govern plant disease resistance architecture.