Researchers in crop science, agriculture, plant breeding, and food security.
Dr Rahul Chandora is a Scientist (Senior scale) at the ICAR-National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources, Regional Station, Shimla. He specializes in the curation and management of potential crops, including adzuki bean, rice bean, amaranth, buckwheat, and chenopod. His research focuses on plant genetic resource (PGR) management of legumes and pseudocereals, encompassing germplasm augmentation, characterization, evaluation (biotic stress, molecular, nutritional profiling), conservation, and database curation. Rahul is skilled in molecular and bioinformatic techniques for plant genetics. As the principal developer, he has developed five varieties - a quinoa variety ('Him Shakti'), two buckwheat varieties ('Him Phaphra' and 'Him Tara'), a grain amaranth variety ('Him Gauri'), and an adzuki bean variety ('Him Jwala') - which have been officially released and notified by the CVRC (Central Variety Release Committee), India. Notably, 'Him Shakti' is the first quinoa variety to be released in India. He has contributed to the establishment of two Community Seed Banks in Himachal Pradesh and the identification and registration of two genetic stocks of French bean (INGR21103 & INGR21136) that are resistant to Bean Common Mosaic Virus. Rahul is overseeing various institutional and externally funded projects as Principal Investigator and Co-Principal Investigator.
Dr Basavaraja, T. started his career as a Scientist at the ICAR- Indian Institute of Pulses Research, Kanpur-208024 (India). He has seven-year of research experience in grain legume genetics and breeding and gained extensive conceptual knowledge in the diverse domain of Genetics, Cytogenetics, Crop Breeding, Population genetics, and Crop Biotechnology. Presently, He is working on genetic enhancement of pulse crops such as Common bean and Mung bean. He was an associated breeder and developer for developing high-yielding high yielding mung bean cultivars viz., IPM 512-1 (Soorya), IPM 312-20 (Vasudha) & IPM 409-4 (Heera). He procured and collected more than 2000 germplasm accessions of common bean from national & international gene banks. He contributed to the development of eight genetic stocks (4, common bean & 4, Mung bean) for BCMV disease resistance, yellow seeded & Bruchid resistance. He is actively working as a project leader in two externally funded projects (the DST-SERB project and Alliance Bioversity International-CIAT Common bean project). For his remarkable contribution to agricultural science, he received a young scientist award in the scientist award ceremony at Lucknow University (Uttar Pradesh).
Dr Aditya Pratap has made significant contributions towards the genetic improvement of crops, especially food legumes, by deploying translational genetics. 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, which revolutionized summer mungbean cultivation in India, besides one of the first MABC-derived Fusarium wilt-resistant chickpea varieties, Samriddhi. He established several useful marker-trait associations in mungbean including grain micronutrients and antinutritional characters, besides pyramiding genes for Fusarium wilt-resistance and accomplishing 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 also established a Vigna wide hybridization garden and paved the way towards its succession utilization in prebreeding and distant hybridization.
Dr Aditya also contributed to the development of a country-wide map of YMD-causing viruses and their molecular detection. He has been a key partner in establishing the ‘International Mungbean Improvement Network’. He has more than 300 publications to his credit, including over 120 peer-reviewed research articles in high-impact national and international Journals, eight books, and several recognitions and awards including Fellow, National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (NAAS), ICAR-Lal Bahadur Shastri Outstanding Young Scientist Award, Norman E. Borlaug International Agricultural Science and Technology Fellowship, Member, National Academy of Sciences (NASI), and Best Research Team Award of WorldVeg as well as AICRP, MULLaRP. He has also been the Organizing Secretary of International Conference on Pulses (ICPulses2023). Dr Aditya is currently working as the Project Coordinator, AICRP on Kharif Pulses, his present assignment including overall coordination, monitoring and appraisal of research and development of Kharif pulses in India. His focus is on developing commercially viable hybrid cultivars with >30% exploitable heterosis in pigeonpea, deployment of MABC approach for Fusarium wilt and SMD resistance in pigeonpea and YMD resistance in mungbean and urdbean, and development and release of biofortified and specialty varieties in kharif pulses.
