Legumes: Physiology and Molecular Biology of Abiotic Stress Tolerance

Professor Dr. M. Prakash born in 1966, served as the Head of the Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding from 2006 to 2012 and is presently serving as the Controller of Examinations, Annamalai University. He has put in 29 years of teaching, research and extension service. He has guided 8 Ph.D. scholars and 25 PG Scholars. He has published more than 150 research papers, ten books and 15 book chapters. He organized 3 International and 15 National Seminars/Conferences and completed five research projects. He has earned the status of Departmental Research Support of University Grants Commission (UGC-SAP- DRS) with financial assistance of Rs. 50 lakhs at Phase I (2009-2014) and Rs. 1.025 Crore at phase II (2015-2020) level as Programme Coordinator. He was awarded with National Merit Scholarship, Government of India during 1981-1988, ICAR Junior Fellowship during 1988-1990, J J Chinoy Gold Medal Award in 2017, Dr. B.P. Pal Memorial NABS Best Scientist Award in 2017, Best Researcher (Publication) Prize in 2016-2017, 2018-2019 and 2021, FELLOW of Indian Society of Plant Physiology, New Delhi in 2015, FELLOW of National Academy of Biological Sciences, Chennai, 2015 and FELLOW of National Environmental Science Academy, New Delhi in 2016.   Dr. R. Anandan is presently working as Assistant Professor of Biotechnology, Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding, Faculty of Agriculture, Annamalai University. He has 15 years of teaching and research experience in plant molecular biology and biotechnology. His areas of teaching and research include plant tissue culture, molecular marker, molecular biology, gene cloning, plant genetic engineering and bio-informatics. He has implemented three research projects funded by TNSCST, DST and UGC-GDA-XII plan innovative Research (Co-PI). He has published more than 35 research papers in National and International Journals, Book Chapters and Proceedings of seminars and organized two national level workshops on Techniques in Plant Molecular Biology. He has supervised many students at the M.Sc. (Ag.) level for their dissertations. He has deposited several partially amplified sequences of DNA barcode in NCBI database. He also qualified ARS/CSIR net examination in the year 2009. He served as session chairman/ rapporteur and invited speaker for several national conferences/seminars. He received best researcher award by Annamalai University in 2007, 2012, 2016 and 2019 and several other awards to his credit. He is instrumental in establishing the molecular marker laboratory from the grant sanctioned by UGC-SAP, DST-FIST, PURSE and RUSA during 2012 to 2019. Dr. Viswanathan Chinnusamy is Principal Scientist & Head, Division of Plant Physiology at the ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), New Delhi. He completed his B.Sc. Agriculture from AC&RI (TNAU), Killikulam, M.Sc. and PhD. from the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi. He carried out hispostdoctoral research at University of Arizona, Tucson, USA, University of California Riverside, USA and Harvard University, Boston, USA. He joined Agricultural Research Service in 1996 at IARI, New Delhi. He has 26 years of research and teaching experience in plant physiology. He h^17000. He has Contributed to the state-of the art research facilities namely Nanaji Deshmukh Plant Phenomics Centre and Discovery Centre at IARI, New Delhi. His current research interest includes phenomics, genetic engineering and genome editing for deciphering the mechanisms abiotic stress tolerance and development of climate resilient crops. Dr. Chinnusamy is a Fellow of the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences and the Indian Society for Plant Physiology. He is also Honorary Secretary of the Indian Society for Plant Physiology and Executive Editor of Plant Physiology Reports from 201 Dr. B. Sunil Kumar serving as Associate Professor in the Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding, Faculty of Agriculture, Annamalai university, Chidambaram, Tamilnadu obtained M.Sc. (Ag.) in Genetics and Plant Breeding and Ph.D in Agricultural Botany from Annamalai University. He had cleared Agricultural Research Service (ARS) - National Eligibility Test (NET) in 2001. He is actively involved in cutting edge research in biotic stresses management in legume crops especially in mungbean and urdbean at biometric, biochemical, biophysical and molecular levels.

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