Yukiko Naruoka, from Japan, was a post-doctoral researcher at Washington State University focused on identifying novel stripe rust resistant genes and molecular markers for known genes using various winter and spring wheat materials in the U.S. Pacific Northwest.
Today, Yukiko is a spring wheat breeder at Syngenta, based in Glyndon, Minnesota, whose responsibility is to develop and evaluate spring wheat lines in conventional and hybrid wheat breeding programs targeting the Northern Plains. She uses new tools and technologies for molecular and genomic selection, data integration and analytic programs in addition to traditional breeding.