Thermotolerance in Crop Plants

Dr. Ranjeet Ranjan Kumar has completed his UG from University of Agriculture Sciences, Bangalore and PhD from Division of Biochemistry, IARI, New Delhi. His research area is ‘stress-genomics and nutritional fortification of millets’. Dr. Ranjan has elucidated several mechanism and modals of heat stress tolerance and remodeled the starch biosynthesis pathway in wheat. He has published more than 80 research papers, 5 Books, 15 Book chapters and several popular articles, bulletins and manuals in the areas of nutrition, stress tolerance and basic principle of Genetic Engineering. He has also guided 4 M.Sc. and 2 Ph.D. Students till date and 2 MSc and one Ph.D. student is presently working under his supervision. Dr. Ranjan has organized more than 8 Center for Advanced Faculty Training (CAFT) for the assistant professors and ARS scientists from ICAR institutes and SAUs. He has experience of handling more than 15 externally funded projects by various agencies viz., DST, DBT, BARC National Fund, etc. Dr. Ranjan has been accolade with various prestigious awards like young scientist award, young scientist associate award, scientist of the year award, etc. He is Fellow of Society of Applied Biotechnology (SAB) and recently been selected for the Associateship of The National Academy of Sciences, India. Dr. Shelly Praveen has completed her PhD from Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi. Her research area is nutritional enhancement and development of strategies for biotic stress tolerance. She has experience of more than 27 years of research and teaching. She has elucidated several mechanisms of host virus interaction and successfully demonstrated the management of economically important viral diseases of tomato through transgenic resistance. Her work in developing the efficient plant transformation vectors and tomato transgenics has been licensed to seed industry for large scale testing and moving towards commercialization. She alsoworked on genomics and functional genomics of different group of plant viruses. Her contribution in full length sequencing of papaya ring spot virus from India has helped in developing virus based resistance strategy. She has published more than 85 research papers in peer reviewed journals with several books, book chapters, popular article, bulletins and technical manuals. She has guided 7 M.Sc. and 10 PhD students in diverse areas of biotic stress tolerance. She has experience of handling more than 12 externally funded projects and currently she is leading a very prestigious networking project of ICAR under Niche Area of Excellence for improving the shelf-life of pearl millet flour. Her research contributions are reflected very well through various prestigious awards like Panjabrao Deshmukh Outstanding Woman Scientist Award 2019, Bharat Ratna Dr C. Subramaniam Award for Outstanding Teachers 2019, Shri Harikrishna Shastri Memorial Award, etc. and her induction as a fellow of NationalAcademy of Sciences, India (NASI) and National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (NAAS). Dr. Gyanendra Kumar Rai obtained M. Sc. and Ph.D. from University of Allahabad, Allahabad, UP, India. He is serving as Assistant Professor (Sr. Scale) Biochemistry at School of Biotechnology, Sher-e- Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology of Jammu. His research areas include stress physiology, proteomics and molecular biology and nutritional physiology. He has published more than 60 research papers, 5 books 4 practical manuals and more than 25 popular articles. He has also and contributed more than 10 book chapters in several books, bulletins and manuals in the areas of nutrition, stress physiology and biotechnology. He has also guided 6 M.Sc. and 2 Ph.D. Students as major advisor and more than 6 M.Sc. and 5 Ph.D. students as Co-Advisor till date. Dr. Rai has edited many compendium and practical manual of various training programme. Dr. Rai has organizedmore than 5 Faculty Training for the Teaching faculty and Scientist from ICAR institutes and SAUs. He has experience of handling 4 externally funded projects by various agencies viz., DST, DBT and ICAR etc. Dr. Rai has been honored with various prestigious awards like young scientist award, young scientist associate award, Best teacher award scientist of the year award, etc. He is Fellow of Society of Applied Biotechnology (SAB) and member of Editorial board of Indian journal of Agricultural Biochemistry.

Heat stress in wheat: adaptation strategies.- Molecular markers mediated heat stress tolerance in crop plants.- Physiology of crop yield under heat stress.- Physiological traits for improving heat stress tolerance in plants.- Understanding the mechanism of high temperature stress effect and tolerance in wheat.- Reactive Oxygen Species – Friend or Foe.- CDPKs based signalling network: Protecting the wheat from heat.- Heat Shock Proteins: Catalytic Chaperones involved in Modulating Thermotolerance in Plants.- Starch metabolism under heat stress.- Heat stress and grain quality.- Omics tools and techniques for study of defense mechanism in plants.- Induced mutagenesis for high temperature tolerance in crop plants.- CRISPR/Cas-based genome editing to enhance heat stress tolerance in crop plants.- Genomics-enabled breeding for heat and drought stress tolerance in crop plants.