Diversity, Distribution, and Current Status

Ajay Kumar Tiwari, PhD is a Scienti?c Of?cer and currently serving as Officer-In-Charge at Sugarcane Research and Seed Multiplication Center, Gola, Khiri, UP, India. He completed his Ph.D. on cucurbit viruses at the CCS University, Meerut, UP, India, in 2011. He is a member of the British Society of Plant Pathology, Indian Phytopathological Society, Sugarcane Technologists Association of India, International Society of Sugarcane Technologists, Society of Sugarcane Research and Promotion, Prof H. S. Srivastava Foundation, and Plant Research and Educational Promotion Society. He has published 100 research articles in reputed national and international journals. He has also authored eight books published by Springer, Taylor & Francis, and Nova. He has submitted more than 300 plant pathogen nucleotide sequences to GenBank. Dr. Tiwari is a regular reviewer and member of the editorial boards of several international journals and is managing editor of Sugar Tech published by Springer (IF1.591) and Chief editor of the Agrica journal. He received the CIPAM Young Researcher Award in 2011 and the DST-SERB Young Scientist Award. He was received the Young Scientist Award by the Chief Minister of the State Government of UP for his outstanding contributions in the area of plant pathology and was the recipient of many international travel awards conferred by DST, DBT, and CSIR in India; PATHOLUX-Luxembourg; and IOM-Brazil. He has attended conferences and workshops in China, Italy, Germany, Vietnam, and Thailand and has delivered invited talks in India and abroad. He is currently involved in research on the molecular characterization and management of agricultural plant pathogens and the production of healthy sugarcane seed materials and their distributions in UP through cane societies. Kadriye Çaglayan is full time professor in Plant Pathology Department of Hatay Mustafa Kemal University in Hatay-Turkey. She has published over 180 research publications and 5 book chapters on plant viruses, phytoplasmas and viroids. She was invited speaker at many national and international meetings and seminars, conveners of many international meetings organized by ISHS, member of scientific committees of several international meetings on plant virology, referee for numerous scientific international journals. She visited many important virology lab worldwide and collaborated with many important scientists. She and her team was involved in many international projects supported by EU, NATO and also Turkish Scientific Council (TUBITAK) in frame of several bilateral projects with different European countries. She is member of the Turkish Phytopathology Society and International Society for Horticultural Science (ISHS) . She is responsible of the Virology laboratory where she is leading a team of about 20 collaborators/students focusing on the diagnosis, epidemiology and control of plant diseases caused by viruses, viroids and phytoplasmas, applying biological approaches and molecular tools. At the moment she is head of Plant Protection Department in her university and also has been member of international projects evaluation advisory board member of TUBITAK in the last 2 years. Abdullah Al-Sadi is a Professor of plant pathology and the Dean of the College of Agricultural and Marine Sciences at Sultan Qaboos University, Oman. He gained his PhD in plant pathology in 2007 from the University of Queensland, Australia. His research is focused on characterizing and managing plant diseases resulting in the decline of vegetable and fruit crops. Al-Sadi published over 233 refereed journal papers indexed in Scopus/WoSwith a cumulative impact factor (WoS) of more than 540. He has supervised 25 PhD and 34 MSc students and received 33 research awards. Al-Sadi is an editorial board member of 3 journals, including Scientific Reports (Nature Group, IF = 4.011). He participated in several strategic missions and national and international committees. Mehdi Azadvar is a Plant Pathology Research Assistant Professor at the Plant Protection Department, Kerman Agricultural and Natural Resources Research and Education Center, Agricultural Research Education and Extension Organization (AREEO), Kerman, Iran. He did his B.Sc. (Plant Protection), and M.Sc. (Plant Pathology) in Iran and his Ph.D. in Plant Pathology from Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), India.He has 22 years of research experience on plant pathology especially on plant pathogenic prokaryotes associated with tropical, subtropical and greenhouse crops. Dr. Azadvar has worked as a researcher or coordinator in more than 35 research projects and guided 31 M.Sc. and Ph.D. plant pathology students. He has authored 4 book chapters and over 47 papers and has delivered more than 110 presentations at national and international meetings. Professor Saman Abeysinghe received his B.Sc. (Hons) Degree in Botany from the University of Ruhuna in 1990 and M.Sc. in Crop Protection from Wageningen Agricultural University, The Netherlands in 1994 and PhD in Molecular Biology from Institute of Molecular Biology & Biotechnology, Vrije University of Brussels (VUB), Belgium in 1998. Currently he is working as a Senior Professor in Plant Pathology & Microbiology at the Dept. of Botany, University of Ruhuna, Sri Lanka. He pursued post-doctoral positions at University of Nottingham, UK under a Commonwealth Academic Fellowship in 2010 and at University of Southern Queensland, Australia under an Australian Endeavour Research fellowship in 2015. He also served as an invited visiting research fellow at Department of Plant Science, University of Manitoba, Canada in 2007. He has also received a special training in Israel on IPM, viruses on cash crops at Shaoxing Academy of Agricultural Sciences in China and Electron Microscopy at Wageningen Agricultural University in The Netherlands. His research includes studies mainly on biological control of soil-borne fungal pathogens and molecular detection and phylogeny of phytoplasmas in which he directed postgraduate supervisions. He has published more than 75 research publications in reputed journals, at national and international conferences including three book chapters and also author of five text books.