Rie Sadohara

Rie Sadohara is a PhD student in the Plant Breeding, Genetics, and Biotechnology Program, where she works on the end-use qualities of common beans such as cooking time, seed color, bean flour and paste qualities.

Before starting at MSU, Rie received a BSc in food science and worked at the R&D department of a distillery, where she investigated “What in barley makes good spirit?” using genetic markers and aromatic compound profiling, which will help faster breeding of barley varieties suited for spirit production.

With the NRT-IMPACT program, she aims to quantitatively measure yellow bean color using image analysis and machine learning in collaboration with the CMSE. This project will lead to a better understanding of the genetic mechanism of color expression and eventually to the development of bean varieties with desirable appearance.