Urmila Basu

Biography

Urmila Basu belongs to the department of Agricultural, Life and Environmental Sciences Agricultural Food and Nutritional Science from the university of Alberta.

Research Interest

Dr. Urmila Basu manages the AFNS central labs and the Genomics Unit. The central labs support the state-of-the-art research utilizing genomics and proteomics, HPLC and gas chromatography, plant growth facilities, animal and plant tissue culture, microbiology, human and animal nutrition, proximate analyses, sensory analysis, and product development and testing. She facilitates the management and implementation of high-throughput functional genomics technologies in multidisciplinary research projects for applications in crop and livestock improvement in the Agri-Food sector and is actively involved in collaborative research projects at the national and international level. The Genomics and Proteomics unit supports the faculty's innovative efforts by the Livestock Genomics, the Embryogene Network/The Swine Reproduction-Development Program and the Dairy Nutritional research Group for improving production efficiency of livestock, as well as developing animal products with improved nutritional qualities. Other important areas of research benefiting from this infrastructure include the Plant Biotechnology and Plant Pathology group creating crops with improved disease resistance and value added characteristics, Canola Breeding Program, Wheat Breeding Program, Functional Genomics and Microbiology group, Food microbiology, the Functional Foods and Nutraceuticals group, and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada. The genomics unit infrastructure includes the next generation Sequencers, capillary sequencer, different platforms for SNP genotyping, the Agilent Tapestation and Bioanalyzer, Real time PCR systems and microarray analyses for gene expression analysis, QIAcube, 2-D gel analysis, multifunctional, laser based fluorescent imaging systems; and cell culture facility.