Mala Ganiger is R&D lead for Minn-Dak Growers Ltd., located in Grand Forks, ND. This company specializes in buckwheat and mustard milling in the food-based industry. Her responsibilities revolve around buckwheat breeding projects, focusing on improving the nutritional and food safety aspects of buckwheat. Mala is also a PhD student in the Department of Plant Sciences at NDSU, working under the guidance of Dr. Richard Horsley, Professor and Head of the Department. Her doctoral research focuses on identifying the genomic regions responsible for the seed coat color in common buckwheat using a Genome-Wide Association Study (GWAS).