Integrated Improvement of Food Legumes

Dr. Aditya Pratap, currently working as the Project Coordinator, All India Coordinated Research Project on Kharif Pulses, has made contributions of eminence towards genetic improvement of food legumes. Amalgamating conventional and molecular tools, he developed 16 varieties, most of them as the team lead. He has to his credit the first pan India extra early mungbean variety, Virat, besides one of the first MABC-derived Fusarium wilt resistant chickpea varieties, Samriddhi. He established useful marker-trait associations in mungbean for several trait, pyramided genes for Fusarium wilt resistance and accomplished genetic mapping of QTLs for drought tolerance in chickpea. He elucidated the role and expression of VrLEA encoding genes for heat tolerance, NBS- LRR- encoding genes for MYMIV resistance, and auxin- encoding gene family for water-logging tolerance in different Vigna species. He developed Vigna wide hybridization garden and established prebreeding and distant hybridization. He also contributed in the development of country-wide map of YMD-causing viruses in Vigna species and their molecular detection. He has been a key partner in establishing "International Mungbean Improvement Network". Besides >320 publications to his credit, he has several recognitions and awards including the Fellow, National Academy of Agricultural Sciences; ICAR-Lal Bahadur Shastri Outstanding Young Scientist Award; Norman E. Borlaug International Agricultural Science and Technology Fellowship and Membership, National Academy of Sciences (NASI). He has also been the Organizing Secretary of International Conference on Pulses (ICPulses2023).

Dr. Chandra Mohan Singh is an Assistant Professor at Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding, Banda University of Agriculture and Technology, Banda, Uttar Pradesh, India. Dr. Singh has an expertise in Molecular Breeding and Biotechnology. He did Post Doctorate in Plant Biotechnology from Center for Plant Biotechnology and Genomics, Spain. Earlier, he served as Scientist (SERB) at ICAR-IIPR, Kanpur. He has published >50 research papers in various reputed national and international journals. His research interests include breeding of legumes and oilseeds, plant pathogen interaction, and functional genomics. He has developed one variety of sesame and three varieties of linseed i.e BUAT Til-1 (CVRC), BUAT Alsi-3 (SVRC), BUAT Alsi-4 (CVRC) and BUAT Alsi-5 (CVRC). In collaboration, he screened the whole linseed germplasm of National Gene Bank for bud fly and registered 04 unique genetic stocks for bud fly resistance as potential donors. He generated genomics/transcriptomics resources in food legumes and submitted the data in NCBI. He is a recipient of various awards like SERB Young Scientist Award by SERB-DST; Fellow of ISPRD, Kanpur and Young Scientist Award by Govt. of Uttar Pradesh.

Dr. Deepak Kumar Verma is a proficient specialist in Agri-food and BioScience domains. He is currently an Independent Researcher and a National Consultant for Center of Excellence in Rice Value Addition, International Rice Research Institute-South Asia Regional Centre, India. He has previously worked as a Scientific Consultant for Professor (Dr.) Cristobal Noe Aguilar at Universidad Autonoma de Coahuila, México. He obtained a Doctorate of Philosophy (PhD) in the field of food processing engineering in 2020 from the Agricultural and Food Engineering Department at the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur. Earlier in the year 2012, he was awarded the DSTINSPIRE Fellowship for pursuing a doctoral degree by the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India. He received the "Young Scientist Award 2021" for his outstanding contribution and recognition in the field of Biochemistry at the 5th International Conference on 'Advances in Smart Agriculture and Biodiversity Conservation for Sustainable Development'. In addition to his specialized expertise in Plant Biochemistry, he has also acquired a comprehensive knowledge base in the fields of Plant Physiology, Plant Breeding, Plant Biotechnology, Molecular Biology and Genetic Engineering, Seed Science and Technology, Agricultural Microbiology, Food Science & Technology etc.

Dr. Awadhesh Kumar Mishra completed Ph.D. in the field of Plant Biotechnology from the National Institute of Plant Genome Research (degree awarded by Jawaharlal Nehru University) in New Delhi, India in 2014. His Ph. D. research focused on the characterization of a different functional aspect of WD40 protein in foxtail millet (Setaria italica) and their evolutionary history. After this, he joined the Center for Plant Biotechnology and Genomics- UPM, Madrid, Sapin India as an Erasmus Postdoctoral Fellow (2016). Later, he moved to another Postdoctoral position, at the Department of Biotechnology, Yeungnam University, Republic of Korea (2017-2018). Since than he has been working as an International Research Professor.