Manuel Casa Branca holds a degree in Fine Arts/Painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts of Lisbon (FBAUL) and completed postgraduate courses in the master’s degree in Drawing at FBAUL and in Pedagogical Professionalization at the University of Évora.
He has held several solo exhibitions in Portugal and Spain and participated in various group exhibitions in Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Holland, England, Poland and the USA.
He has been awarded nationally and internationally (e.g. prize of the City of Brétigny at the “XLV Salon de Peinture et Sculpture l’Ile-de-France”; “Henrique Pousão Painting Award” by the Municipality of Vila Viçosa in 2010).
He is editor of the newspaper Folha de Montemor where he maintains a monthly column on Fine Arts.
As a teacher of Visual Arts, he teaches at the Arraiolos School.
CEBAL
CORK OAK IN RESEARCH
This is a short story about the Cork Oak in Research, which aims to tell the story of the research work carried out by the Alentejo Centre for Biotechnology and Agriculture and Agri-Food (CEBAL). It covers the sequencing of the Cork Oak genome, a world first, followed by the creation of the F1 population with a known pedigree, with fathers and mothers who are good cork producers as a result of controlled pollination. Behind each photograph is a scientific assumption that makes up major steps in the cork oak improvement programme.