Dr. Benjamin Karikari - Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Consumer Sciences

DR. BENJAMIN KARIKARI Lecturer DEPARTMENT OF Agricultural Biotechnology FACULTY OF AGRICULTURE, FOOD AND CONSUMER SCIENCES NYANKPALA Campus

Background

Benjamin Karikari (PhD) is a Lecturer and Postgraduate Coordinator of the Department of Agricultural Biotechnology. He joined the University since December 2020. He holds PhD in Crop Genetics and Breeding from Nanjing Agricultural University, China, with expertise in bioinformatics, genomics (linkage and association mappings, marker-assisted breeding, gene/genome editing by Clustered regular interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR)/CRISPR-associated protein9 (Cas9) (CRISPR/Cas9), Overexpression and Virus Induced Gene Silencing (VIGS)), proteomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics and microbiomics, along with conventional breeding strategies. He handles courses such as bioinformatics, and Molecular Biology and Genetic Engineering. He handles some contents in Crop Physiology, Breeding for Horticultural Crops and Concepts of Biotechnology with other senior members. He has skills in use of several statistical software, among them include R, GenStats, GraphPadPrism, Origin, TASSEL, Minitab, Stata, SPSS, Statistica, Statgraphics, Design Expert, Statistics and KyPlot. He was a recipient of 2021 Young African Phosphorus Fellowship Award from African Plant Nutrition Institute. His on-going research covers common bean (phosphorus use efficiency (PUE) and other agronomic trials), and soybean (PUE, climate related traits and agronomic traits). He introduced 308 Mungbean accessions from World Vegetable Center in Taiwan as a way of diversifying plant-based protein and legume crops in Ghana. Dr. Karikari is a Guest Editor and Reviewer for many journals of international repute including Frontiers in Plant Science, BMC Plant Biology, Scientific Reports, Theoretical and Applied Genetics, The Plant Genome, Genes, Plants, International Journal of Molecular Sciences, among others. Dr. Karikari has authored 45 peer-reviewed articles, 2 book chapters, 2 blog posts and 1 manual. Dr. Karikari commenced his Postdoctoral Fellowship in University Laval, Quebec Canada in June 2023 with focus on genome editing (CRISPR/Cas9) in soybean and development of pipeline for use of k-mers in genome-wide association mapping. He presented a poster at Plant and Animal Genome 31 Conference in San Diego, California, United States. He has several collaborators in China, Czech Republic, Egypt, Ghana, Benin, Mali, Nigeria, among others.

Research Interests

Demand-driven crop breeding by conventional and molecular strategies
Phosphorus-use efficient crop breeding
Marker-assisted breeding for climate resilient crops
Unravelling functions of genes by CRISPR/Cas9 technology
Linkage and association mappings in crops
Germplasm collection, characterisation, conservation, and utilisation

For more details on publications, see
ResearchGate (https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Benjamin-Karikari) and
Google Scholar (https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=YE8D-FsAAAAJ&hl=en).

Email Address: bkarikari@uds.edu.gh

Karikari B, Bhat JA, Ahiakpa JA and Addy SNTT (2023). Use of Cutting-Edge Technologies for Pulse Crops Improvement. In Smart Breeding - Molecular Interventions and Advancements for Crop Improvement (eds: Chandra K, Chand S, Saini RP and Sharma R.). CRC Press, Taylor and Francis Group. Chapter 3, pp.61-104. ISBN hard: 978-1-77491-331-4. Ebook ISBN: 9781003361862.
Karikari B, Lemay M-A, Belzile F. k-mer-Based Genome-Wide Association Studies in Plants: Advances, Challenges, and Perspectives. Genes. 2023; 14(7):1439. https://doi.org/10.3390/genes14071439
Razzaq KM, Hina A, Abbasi A, Karikari B, Ashraf HA, Mohiuddin M, Maqsood, Maqsood A, Ul Haq I, Xing G, Raza G and Bhat JA (2023). Molecular and genetic insights into secondary metabolic regulation underlying insect-pest resistance in legumes. Functional & Integrative Genomics, 23(3):217. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10142-023-01141-w
Raza A, Charagh S, Karikari B, Sharif R, Yadav V, Mubarik MS, Habib M, Zhuang Y, Zhang C, Chen H, Varshney RK, and Zhuang W (2023). miRNAs for crop improvement. Plant Physiology and Biochemistry, 201:10785. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.plaphy.2023.107857
Karikari B, Maale, MD, Anning, E, Akakpo, DB, Abujaja, AM, and Addai, IK (2023). Cowpea cropping systems, traits preference and production constraints in the upper west region of Ghana: farmers' consultation and implications for breeding. CABI Agriculture and Bioscience, 4:17 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1186/s43170-023-00159-1
Tadda SA, Li C, Ding J, Li J, Wang J, Huang H, Fan Q, Chen L, He P, Ahiakpa JK, Karikari B, Chen X and Qiu D (2023) Integrated metabolome and transcriptome analyses provide insight into the effect of red and blue LEDs on the quality of sweet potato leaves. Frontiers in Plant Science, 14:1181680. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2023.1181680
Effah Z, Li L, Xie J, Karikari B, Xu A, Wang L, Du C, Duku Boamah E, Adingo S and Zeng M (2023). Widely untargeted metabolomic profiling unearths metabolites and pathways involved in leaf senescence and N remobilization in spring-cultivated wheat under different N regimes. Frontiers in Plant Science, 14:1166933. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2023.1166933.
Oteng-Frimpong R, Karikari B, Sie KS, Kassim BY, Puozaa DK, Rasheed MA, Fonceka D, Okello DK, Balota M, Burow M, Ozias-Akins P. (2023). Multi-Locus Genome-Wide Association Studies Reveal Genomic Regions and Putative Candidate Genes Associated with Leaf Spot Diseases in African Groundnut (Arachis hypogaea L.) Germplasm. Frontiers in Plant Science, 13:1076744. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2022.1076744.