Mr. Mwije Anthony (Uganda) - GTA Fellow / Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Horticultural Science, Stellenbosch University, South Africa. He is a Ugandan agriculturalist and teacher by profession and training. Currently, Mr Mwije is in his third year of a Ph.D. programme in Horticultural Science at Stellenbosch University. His Ph.D. research focuses on applied plant physiology techniques to enhance production of quality apple (Malus domestica, Borkh) fruits in an increasingly warming up environment by using mineral nutrition regimes at post full bloom in apple trees. Particularly this Ph.D. study is about understanding the role of boron and calcium minerals on the biochemistry, metabolite accumulation and subsequent resistance of the apple fruit peels to sunburn damage. RUFORUM members, Makerere and Stellenbosch Universities and the Carnegie Corporation of New York, are supporting this Ph.D. training. Previously, Mr. Mwije worked as research assistant at the Makerere Plant Tissue Culture Laboratory, where he investigated the frequency and impact of somaclonal variations on banana farms established from tissue culture plantlets. Later on, he worked with sweetpotato BIOEARN project at the same laboratory where he did his MSc. research on sweetpotato breeding particularly the heritability of drought traits in selected Ugandan sweetpotato cultivars.
