Harshita Mangal

Harshita Mangal

PhD Student

Harshita Mangal from India is a PhD student in the Department of Agronomy and Horticulture. Her research focuses on dissecting complex traits in Sorghum bicolor, with a primary focus on flowering time regulation and nitrogen use efficiency. She works at the intersection of field-based phenotyping, genomics, and computational biology, integrating resequencing data, RNA-seq, and multi-environment field trials. Harshita has led genome-wide (GWAS) and transcriptome-wide (TWAS) association studies to uncover genetic signals underlying key agronomic traits. She is currently working on modeling phenotypic plasticity, identifying regulatory networks through co-expression analysis, and validating SNP datasets for genotype accuracy across large populations.

In the News

  • Nebraska Corn outreach
    Jensina, Sofiya, and Harshita had the chance to meet with members of the Nebraska Corn Growers Association and talk about their work on lab projects related to crop breeding, optimizing nitrogen use, and using artificial intelligence to study leaf diseases in new ways.
  • UNL-Bayer Hackathon
    Ryleigh Kirby, Harshita Mangal, Sofiya Arora, Jensina Davis, Hadiya Kounsar, Ozgur Altundas, Amany Gomaa, and Karla Cuéllar joined the Bayer Agriculture Data Hackathon, where Sofiya’s team won first place, Hadiya and Ryleigh’s team took second, Jensina’s team placed third, and Ozgur’s team earned the social engagement award.
  • Students Presentations at the PSI Plant Science Symposium
    Jensina Davis, Harshita Mangal, and Sofiya Arora each had the chance to deliver presentations at the 2025 PSI Plant Science Symposium here on campus.
  • Sorghum TWAS Published
    “Genes and pathways determining flowering time variation in temperate-adapted sorghum,” our lab’s first sorghum TWAS paper was published in TPJ. Congratulations to lead author Harshita Mangal and the whole team who made this happen.
  • Harshita wins awards at NPSS
    Harshita Mangal was awarded second prize for her lightning talk at the 2024 Corteva-Nebraska Plant Science Symposium and takes home a poster prize as well. Nicely done!
  • Lab presentations at Nebraska Plant Science Symposium
    Five members of our lab—Amany (talk), Harshita (talk), Waqar, Ramesh, Nikee, Jensina, and Vladimir—explained their work at the 2024 Nebraska Plant Science Symposium.

Recent Publications