OUR FELLOWS
Victoria Bikogwa Bulegeya is from Kilosa district in eastern Tanzania, where her family cultivated rice, maize, and later sunflowers as the climate became drier. After finishing a BSc in Environmental Sciences at Sokoine University of Agriculture in Morogoro, she planned to work at the natural resource research, specializing in forestry and soil science in her institute. But because the section already employed four women and one man, her superiors assigned her to work in the traditionally male-dominated area of crop research, with a focus on cotton breeding.
Although she had taken a few courses in agriculture, she knew a little about breeding. “It is a difficult discipline,” she says. Many people try it and leave. Three others had trained there before me, and each one moved to a different job or discipline.
Field of Research
Agriculture research focusing on development of high-yield cotton varieties with the ability to tolerate climate variability and resist pest and disease attacks through the application of biotechnology techniques.