Krishna Bhattarai, Ph.D.

Krishna Bhattarai, Ph.D.

Krishna Bhattarai is an assistant professor and breeder for controlled environment agriculture at the Texas A&M AgriLife Research and Extension Center in Dallas, TX. Bhattarai directs the CEA Breeding Program at Texas A&M University, which was established in 2023. The focus of the breeding program has been to breed crops for yield, resource use efficiency, higher phenological and horticultural trait quality, and develop resilient crops, develop genetic and genomic resources for CEA-grown crops, and explore and utilize the genetic diversity to increase genetic gains of novel and important traits pertaining to CEA. Bhattarai received his undergraduate degree in B. Sc. (Agriculture) from Tribhuvan University, Nepal. He received his MS degree from North Carolina State University where his research focused on developing bacterial spot resistance in fresh-market tomato. He earned his doctoral degree from the University of Florida researching the discovery of powdery mildew resistance genes in gerbera daisy. He did his postdoctoral research at the University of California, Davis, studying flavor and aromatic traits in strawberries. Before joining Texas A&M AgriLife Research, Bhattarai worked as a junior breeder at Enza Zaden Research, working towards breeding new varieties for processing tomatoes.