Wheat and Barley Grain Biofortification

Due to his outstanding meritorious profile, Dr. Gupta has the distinction of receiving numerous honours, fellowships and awards in recognition to his excellent academic and research contributions. He has been bestowed with Jawahar Lal Nehru Award for outstanding Doctoral thesis by ICAR, University Silver Medal, Aspee Gold Medal and Dr. Kirtikar Memorial Gold Medal during his Bachelor degree programme. Dr. Gupta has published many original research and review papers in peer reviewed international journals. He presented his research papers in several national and international symposia/ workshops/ conferences. He is also editorial board members and reviewers of many international journals. Currently he is working on identification and characterization of Fe/Zn responsive transporters genes in wheat using NGS approach and in vitro bioavailability analysis of micronutrients such as Fe and Zn in wheat grains. Dr. Pandey’s areas of specialization are molecular biology, transgenics and plant transformation, bioinformatics tools, plant RNAi studies, proteomics, transcriptomics, microarrays and molecular markers. Dr Pandey is a part of several projects with key focus on nutritional and processing quality enhancement of wheat using biochemical and molecular approaches with major emphasis on wheat grain biofortification. Dr Pandey has worked at Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) and National Institute for Plant Biotechnology and had developed tobacco transgenics and nutritionally enhanced soybean low-phytate transgenics. Publications include nine research papers, several technical bulletins, articles and book chapters. Dr. Narwal’s main area of research is on nutritional and processing quality of wheat and barley. She has worked on the antioxidant potential and phenolic compounds in wheat and barley including the effect of various processing conditions, cooking methods and blending on these traits. She is also working on the biofortification of wheat with iron and Zn and is associated with the identification of wheat lines with high phytase and low phytic acid content. She is associated with studies on biochemical parameters of grain in relation to the malting quality of barley especially beta-glucan and proanthocyanidins. She is actively associated with the quality component of All India Coordinated Research Programme on wheat and barley. Dr. Sharma’s research focuses on Agriculture Biotechnology, specifically on the characterization of genes and SSRs for abiotic stresses (drought and heat) and understating the role of epigenetics, Gene silencing and small RNAs in for wheat improvement. He has been associated with several networking projects funded as Agri-Bioinformatics Promotion Program, ACIAR-DST, and DBT-BBSRC, ICAR Networking projects on AMMAS, Cabin and AMAAS schemes etc. He has published 90 peer reviewed papers, editor of six books published in CRC, Elsevier and Academic Press, and 20 book chapters. Dr Sharma has been associated with a recently released bread wheat variety DBW71 and three trait specific genetic and has been awarded with ICAR-Lal Bahadur Shastri Outstanding Young Scientist Award, NAAS- Young Scientist 2007 and ISCA- Pran Vohra Awards. Dr Sharma is Chief Editor of Journal of Cereal Research and editorial of several journals. Dr. Ram has focused on the area of wheat grain quality for the last 22 years. He has contributed significantly in understanding the wheat grain quality at molecular, biochemical, rheological and baking levels. Knowledge and the material generated have opened new avenues for wheat breeders to improve processing and nutritional quality of wheat. His main area of interest is characterization of biochemical/molecular components associated with processing and nutritional quality of wheat and development of superior wheat cultivars with enhanced nutritional quality traits. He developed micro level tests for various quality traits and characterized genes for grain hardness, glutenins, phytase and developed functional marker for LMW glutenin Glu-B3b. He developed mutants with high phytase levels in high yielding background in wheat for increasing bioavailability of micronutrients in human beings. Dr. G.P. Singh has vast experience in wheat research for more than 25 years. He has developed 37 wheat varieties and 34 genetic stocks suited to different agro climatic zones of the country. Dr. Singh has published more than 160 research and review papers in reputed peer journals. He is recipient of several prestigious awards such as Rafi Ahmed Kidwai award and BP Pal Gold Medal. He is fellow of many scientific academies and societies such as National Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Indian Society of Genetics and Plant Breeding, Society of Advancement of Wheat Research, Society for Scientific Development in Agriculture and Technology. He has actively organised several workshops and symposia and chaired many scientific sessions. He is actively involved in mobilization of wheat technologies from lab to farmer’s field.