Dennis Omondi spent two research visits in the MPPI lab at FABI and Department of Plant and Soil Sciences during his MSc degree as part of a bilateral NRF Kenya-South Africa project on maize foliar diseases. He was mentored by Dr David Nsibo, and they worked together on field visits in Kenya. Dennis graduated in February 2022 with an MSc (Plant Breeding) supervised by Prof. Mathews Dida, Maseno University, and co-supervised by Prof. Dave Berger and Dr Yoseph Beyene, Senior Maize Breeder, CIMMYT, Nairobi.  Dr. Beyene is an alumnus of FABI (PhD in FMG, Postdoc in MPPI).  Dennis contributed to a Cercospora zeina population genetics study in western Kenya (see Nsibo et al., 2021). He also mapped QTLs for disease resistance using a CIMMYT double haploid maize population. His MSc was entitled “Characterization of the genetic diversity of Cercospora zeina in Kenya and mapping the QTL for resistance to gray leaf spot and turcicum leaf blight in maize”.