Dr. Muhammad Shafiq ShahidDepartment of Crop Sciences,
College of Agricultural and Marine Sciences,
Sultan Qaboos University,
Oman
Biography
Shahid is working as an Assistant Professor in department of Crop Sciences, College of Agricultural and Marine Sciences, Sultan Qaboos University, Oman. Prior to joining SQU, he worked as a postdoctoral associate at University of Arkansas USA, and postdoctorate fellow at Tokyo University of Agriculture, Japan. He earned Bachelor of honors in Agriculture, as well as a Master of honors in agriculture and plant pathology and Ph. D in molecular plant virology. As a Crop Science faculty member, he teaches CROP2201; Introduction to Agricultural biotechnology CROP 4111; Methods in plant pathology CROP4541; Plant pathogen Interaction CROP4546; Integrated disease management CROP6009; Plant Virology, undergraduate and graduate courses. His research focuses mainly on single stranded DNA viruses (begomoviruses; family: Geminiviridae) infecting important agricultural crops, virus host interaction and their management. Currently, he has been the author of many ISI Journal publications, book chapter and the article.
Research Interest
His research focuses on plant viruses and virus-host interaction.
Being a molecular plant virologist, my research area focuses on management of different horticultural crops. For instance, tomato yellow leaf curl disease is a major constraint to the production of tomato across the middle-east as well as being a grave concern to tomato growers in parts of the world which suffer losses due to begomoviruses of family Geminiviridae, but nevertheless are areas where the whitefly vector Bemicia. tabaci is endemic.
Recent, reports of the identification of recombinant resistance strains of plant infecting viruses has been reported from different tomato farms in Al-Batinah region in Oman that understandably greeted with dismay by the tomato farming community. So, we are trying to study the interaction, population structure and epidemiology study of tomato yellow leaf curl disease complex in the region and by using different biotechnology approaches to cope up with this problem particularly the tomato crop and the model developed here will be apply for other corps to get sustainable agriculture in the Sultanate Oman.