Our Team
Principal Investigator
Anže Švara, Assistant Professor
Anže Švara is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Plant Sciences at the College of Agriculture and Bioresources, University of Saskatchewan. He holds a Ph.D. from KU Leuven in Belgium, and a B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Biotechnology from the University of Ljubljana. He completed his postdoctoral training and research at Cornell University in New York. Currently, Anže leads the USask Fruit Program, a research and breeding program focused on improving horticultural crops for the Northern Prairies. His work aims to uncover the genetic basis of key traits to enhance crop quality, boost production efficiency, and promote sustainability while aligning with consumer demands. His research spans both wild relatives and modern cultivars of crops such as haskap, saskatoons, apples, and hazelnuts. By developing new fruit varieties, Anže and the USask Fruit Program team are contributing to the advancement of the global fruit industry.
Lab Manager
Justin Schaeffer, Research Technician
B.Sc Agronomy, University of Saskatchewan
Fruit Breeding Program: 2015-current
Department of Plant Sciences
Email: justin.schaeffer@usask.ca
Research Interests: Plant tissue culture, bioreactors, polyploidy and plant breeding
Crops of interest: Hazelnuts, haskaps, sour cherry, saskatoon berries.
Graduate Students
Eileen van Heerde , MSc student
Research interests: Haskaps, plant genetics and breeding, metabolomics, storage, polyploidy.
Sumi Sarkar, MSc student
Research interests: Crossbreeding of Saskatoon berries, Plant tissue culture, Genetics and genomics of plants, Plant transformation.
Summer Students
Fikret Ukis
Tanner Johnson
Volunteers
Bob Bors
Oz
Daniel Ronis