New and Future Developments in Microbial Biotechnology and Bioengineering

Dr. Ram Prasad is an Associate Professor at Mahatma Gandhi Central University, Bihar, India. Dr. Prasad has served as an Assistant Professor Amity University Uttar Pradesh, India; Visiting Assistant Professor, Whiting School of Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, United States, and Research Associate Professor at School of Environmental Science and Engineering, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China. Dr. Prasad has more than two hundred publications to his credit, including research papers, review articles, and book chapters; has edited or authored several books; and has five patents issued or pending. He’s on the editorial boards of a number of journals, and his research interests include plant-microbe interaction, agriculture sustainability, nanobiotechnology, and applied microbiology. Dr. Sarvajeet Singh Gill is an Assistant Professor at Centre for Biotechnology, Maharshi Dayanand University, Rohtak. His research focus includes Agricultural Plant Biotechnology; Biotic & Abiotic stress biology, plant microbe interaction and in-silico understanding of plant genomes. In addition to his research and teaching responsibilities he has served as Associate Editor for the Brazilian Journal of Botany, and as Guest Editor of Plant Genes. He was Guest Editor of BioMed Research International’s Special Issue (Plant Stress & Biotechnology); Frontiers in Plant Science, Section-Environmental Toxicology (Topic Title: Phytotoxicity of high and low levels of plant-beneficial heavy metal ions); Frontiers in Plant Science, Section-Crop Science and Horticulture (Topic Title: The Brassicaceae - agri-horticultural and environmental perspectives); Frontiers in Plant Science, Section-Plant Physiology (Topic Title: Recent insights into the double role of hydrogen peroxide in plants); and Functional Genomics Approaches to Decipher Plant Resilience to Environmental Stresses (International Journal of Plant Genomics). An elected fellow of numerous national and international academies, Dr. Narendra Tuteja is currently Professor and head at Amity Institute of Microbial Technology, NOIDA, India, and visiting Scientist at International Centre for Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology (ICGEB), New Delhi, India. He has made significant contributions to crop improvement under adverse conditions, reporting the first helicase from plant and human cells and demonstrating new roles of Ku autoantigen, nucleolin and eIF4A as DNA helicases. Furthermore, he discovered novel functions of helicases, G-proteins, CBL-CIPK and LecRLK in plant stress tolerance, and PLC and MAP-kinase as effectors for Ga and Gß G-proteins. Narendra Tuteja also reported several high salinity stress tolerant genes from plants and fungi and developed salt/drought tolerant plants.

1. The Use of Microorganisms for Gene Transfer and Crop Improvement 2. Actinomycetes as potential plant growth promoting microbial communities 3. Microbial genes in crop improvement 4. Microbial transformations implicit with soil and crop productivity in rice system 5. Application of Microbial Biotechnology in Food Processing 6. Innate immunity engaged or disengaged in plant-microbe interactions 7. Novel Strategies for Engineering Resistance to Plant Viral Diseases 8. Molecular characterization of sugarcane viruses and their diagnostics 9. Cyanobacterial Biodiversity and Biotechnology: A Promising Approach for Crop Improvement 10. Pseudomonas flourescens - A Potential Plant Growth Promoting Rhizobacteria (PGPR) and biocontrol agent 11. Crop Improvement Through Microbial Technology: a Step Towards Sustainable Agriculture 12. Microbial technologies for sustainable crop production 13. Trichoderma, its multifarious utility in crop improvement 14. Microbe-mediated enhancement of nitrogen and phosphorus content for crop improvement 15. Microbiome in Crops: Diversity, distribution and potential role in crops improvements 16. Plant Growth Promoting Rhizobacteria (PGPR): Perspective in Agriculture under Biotic and Abiotic stress 17. Rhizosphere metabolite profiling: An opportunity to understand plant–microbe interactions for crop improvement 18. Phosphate-solubilizing Pseudomonads for improving crop plant nutrition and agricultural productivity 19. Targeted Genome editing for crop improvement in post genome sequencing era 20. Endophytic Microorganisms: Their Role in Plant Growth and Crop Improvement 21. Microbes in crop improvement: future challenges and perspective 22. Plant-microbe interaction and genome sequencing: an evolutionary insight 23. Crop breeding using CRISPR/Cas9