Dr.Roger Chetelat is the Director and Curator of the C.M. Rick Tomato Genetics Resource Center, a national and international genebank of tomato wild species and genetic stocks located in Davis, California. The Rick Center maintains and distributes seed samples to interested researchers, breeders and educators around the world. Current research projects at the Center are focused on the study of self- and interspecific incompatibility, and the development of new sources of prebred germplasm to expand the genepool of cultivated tomato. Understanding the mechanisms and evolution of pollen-pistil incompatibility reveals how plants control pollination to avoid both inbreeding and excessive outcrossing, and provides new tools to overcome reproductive barriers that prevent wide hybridization in breeding programs. The Rick Center is using this information to introgress the genome of Solanum sitiens, an extreme xerophyte native to the Atacama Desert in Chile.
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