VEGETOS

Prof Trilochan Mohapatra was holding the position of Director-cum-Vice Chancellor of the prestigious Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi. Prior to this, he worked as the Director of National Rice Research Institute (formerly CRRI), Cuttack. He served National Research Centre on Plant Biotechnology, IARI, New Delhi as researcher and teacher for about 20 years. He is a scientist of global repute working in the area of molecular genetics and genomics. Dr. Mohapatra has over 145 research papers in national and international journals of repute and several book chapters. His research accomplishments include development of the first high yielding Basmati rice variety resistant to bacterial leaf blight through molecular marker assisted selection, and physical mapping and genome sequencing of rice and tomato. He is a Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy, National Academy of Sciences-India, Allahabad and the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences, New Delhi.
Prof Mohapatra is presently the Director General, ICAR and Secretary, DARE, New Delhi

Prof Mahendra Pal Yadav was born in Village Surkhuroo, Dist. Bulandshahar, Uttar Pradesh, India on 2 June 1945 and was educated at B.R. College, Agra 1962-63; Veterinary College, Mathura, 1963-68; Indian Veterinary Research Institute, Izatnagar, 1969-72 for B.V.Sc & AH 1966; M.V.Sc. 1968; Ph.D. 1973. He served as Professor, Virology, 1981-82, and Prof. & Head, Division of Virology, 1982-87, Indian Veterinary Research Institute (IVRI), Mukteswar; Principal Scientist & In-charge Animal Health Unit, 1987-93, and Director, 1993-2000, National Research Centre on Equines, Hisar; Director, IVRI, Izatnagar, 2000-06; Vice-Chancellor, Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Univ. of Agric. & Tech., Meerut, 2006-09.
Prof Yadav was awarded Chancellors Medal 1966: Lance Award, 61 Cavalry, India 1996; ICAR Special Award 1998; Major (Mrs.) Malika IAAVR Award 2001; OIE International Meritorious Award 2000; Distinguished Veterinarian Award 2002; Dr. P. Richard Masillamony Oration Award 2003; Vocational Education and Development Award 2003; Higher Education and Development International Award 2004; Order of Merit Award in Management 2004; Swadeshi Vigyan Puruskar 2004 of Vigyan Bharati; UP Council of Science & Technology Vigyan Gaurav Award 2004-05; NRDC Meritorious Invention Award 2005; World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), Geneva Award 2005; Dr. C.M. Singh Samman 2005; IAVPH Life Time Achievement Award 2006; Eminence Award 2007 (Society for Plant Research); World Institution Building Programme Life Time Achievement Award, 2008; Lakhi Ram Memorial Award 2008; Lalbahadur Shashtri Honor 2008; Padma Vibhushan Dr. M.S. Swaminathan Agricultural Scientist Award 2009; Dr. P. G. Pandey Oration Award 2010 (IAVMI); Life Time Achievement Award, 2011 (ISACP); Dr. A. Lingard Memorial Award, 2012 by Indian Academy of Environmental Sciences; Dr. M.R. Dhanda Memorial Oration Award, 2012 (IAPH); Excellence in Virology Award- 2013 of Indian Virology Society(IVS); Prof. K. S. Bhagava Oration Award- 2016 (IVS). President, Indian Virological Society 1996-2003; President, IAVMI 1999 to date; President, IAUA 2006-07; President NAVS(I) 2011-13; FAO National Consultant; Consultant, Haryana Farmers' Commission, 2010-13; Secretary, National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (2014-16). He remained Patron, Society of Plant Research (2008 to 2017). Prof Yadav is the Fellow; National Academy of Veterinary Sciences; Indian Association for Advancement of Veterinary Research; Indian Virological Society; Indian Society of Veterinary Immunology & Biotechnology; Society for Immunology & Immunopathology; Royal Society of Crop Sciences. Honorary Fellow Uttar Pradesh Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Lucknow-2015.

Prof Anupam Varma was born in Delhi on 23rd July 1940. Educated at Allahabad University, Allahabad 1957-61 and at Rothamsted Experimental Station, Harpenden, UK. 1964-67 for B.Sc. 1959; M.Sc. 1961 and Ph.D. 1967.
Prof Varma is serving as INSA Senior Scientist, Advanced Center for Plant Virology, IARI 2005 till date. He remained at Applied Plant Virologist FAO Nigeria 1979-81; Professor of Virology, 1984-86, Professor of Plant Pathology, 1986-88, Head, Division of Plant Pathology, 1988-95, Dean, 1995-2000 and ICAR National Professor, Advanced Centre for Plant Virology, 2000-2005 at Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi.
Prof Varma has been awarded FAO/IAAS World Food Day Award, 1985; VASVIK Award, 1989; O.P. Bhasin Award, 1992; James Wallace Award, Int. Org. Citrus Virol., 1999; NASI R.N. Tandon Award 2000; INSA T.S. Sadasivan Award, 2002; ISCA Millennium Plaque of Honour Award 2006; IVS K.S. Bhargava Award 2007; PNASF Gold Medal Award, 2009 and was the Chair, International Council of for Science Regional Committee for Asia and the Pacific, 2006-08.
Prof Varma is the Fellow: Indian National Science Academy; National Academy of Sciences, India; Indian Phytopath. Soc.; Indian Virol. Soc. Research Areas: Plant virology, plant pathology, plant biotechnology, crop protection.
He is currently INSA Fellow, Department of Virology at Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi.

Prof. R. K. Gupta is currently a Dean Faculty at SKUAST-J, Jammu, India. He has completed his MSc in Plant Breeding from PAU Ludhiana, India in 1984 and PhD from HPAU, India in 1989. He has started his professional career in 1982 in Horticulture and then served in various capacities. He has been conferred many awards and honors like JRF/SRF (ICAR), FAO Fellowship (UN), Young Scientist Fellowship (J&K DST), Prof BM Johri Award, President, Society for Plant Research, India for two consecutive terms upto 2017 and was the Vice President, Crop Improvement Society of India. He is life member of many scientific societies. He is well known for his scientific communications on food security, biodiversity and biotechnology as evident from lead/invited/expert lectures or keynote speeches delivered in SAUs, Central Universities, IIM and other institutions across the country. His work is on biotic and abiotic stress tolerance, plant tissue culture, vegetable breeding, seed production and a bio resource has been documented in journal of repute.

Prof. R.R. Hanchinal served as the Chairperson, Protection of Plant Varieties & Farmers Rights Authority (Secretary Rank) Government of India besides serving as Vice Chancellor, University of Agricultural Sciences, Dharwad and other key posts. He was advisor to Indonesia Government for the development of Food Crop Research (2003-2005) and also served as Senior Seed Production specialist for the USAID West Africa Seed Alliance-ICRISAT (2008) and established commercial seed industry in five countries viz., Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria and Ghana. In the year 2017, he was superannuated from the post of Chairman, PPV & FRA and is now the President of Society for Plant Research w.e.f. January 1, 2018.
As a plant breeder, Prof. Hanchinal made significant contribution both in basic and applied research. He has developed and released 23 varieties in different corps. In wheat he developed 17 varieties which include the worlds first semi-dwarf dicoccum wheat var. DDK-1001 which possesses therapeutic quality and recommended for the management of Diabetes mellitus and cardiovascular diseases. One of his bread wheat var. 162 is quite popular in Peninsular India and has been released in Indonesia in the name of DEVATA. The variety Dharwad Dry is being used by CIMMYT as check variety in International trials. He developed unique method for the first time by selecting and adopting potential villages for seed production with Modified Seed Village Concept which is popularly known as DHARWAD MODEL. This model became role model for the country and helped to saturate Karnataka region with improved varieties in high volume low value crops viz., groundnut, soybean, pulses and cereals. Under his leadership, by the year 2012, the UAS Dharwad became first in the country among the Universities by producing more than 100,000 qtls. of quality seeds and 10,00,000 planting material.
In the Agro-biodiversity hot spots, he promoted conservation and protection of farmers varieties and establishment of community seed banks/clonal banks through awareness programmes. The model Take it to the Farmer-Farmers Rights through awareness helped in popularity the provisions of Farmers Rights and IPR to Farmers. As a result six fold increases in farmers variety application were received by the Authority in a span of four years for PVP-entitlement.
For his outstanding work, he was awarded with as many as 22 national/international Awards. Also a grantee for the Obama-Singh 21st Century knowledge initiative (2012).
Prof. Hanchinal is a Fellow of National Academy of Agricultural Sciences, National Academy of Biological Sciences and Honorary fellow/fellow of many professional societies and 394 publications at his credit. Presently Prof. Hanchinal is working as Consultant-Genetic Resources Conservation & Use, Bioversity International-Country Office- India, NASC Complex, PUSA Campus, New Delhi.

Prof. Subodh Kumar Bhatnagar founded Society for Plant Research in 1988 as Secretary General and started the publication of VEGETOS which has completed 25 glorious years with its graceful release at NASC complex by DG, ICAR. Presently Prof Bhatnagar is the Editor in Chief of VEGETOS.
Prof Bhatnagar was awarded CSIR-SRF in 2009; INSA-COSTED FELLOWSHIP in 1985 to work at France, UK, The Netherlands and Belgium; INDO-GREECE VISITING SCIENTIST FELLOWSHIP to work at University of Athens, University of Crete and University of Thessaloniki; Elected as Fellow of Indian Botanical Society (FBS); Elected Vice President of Prof H S Srivastava Foundation for Science and Society (PHSSFSS), Lucknow; Elected as Fellow of Linnean Society, London (FLS); Elected for VASVIK Award-2010; elected for Prof H S Srivastava Memorial Lecture-2013; Member, Project Evaluation Committee, Uttarakhand Council of Biotechnology (UCB), Member, Research Evaluation Committee, CCRAS, Ministry of AYUSH, New Delhi; Nominated as Co-Ordinator, Centre of Teaching Excellence, Agriculture Innovation Partnership (AIP), Cornell University, USA; PRT Co-Ordinator for accreditation by the ICAR and Co-Ordinator of ICAR-Assessment Committee visit to the University.
Prof Bhatnagar accredited many prestigious institutions like Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), Mumbai; Tata Memorial Centre, Mumbai; Annamalai University, Tamilnadu; Gujarat Ayurved University, Jamnagar; Veer Narmad South Gujarat University, Surat; Institute of Chemical Technology, Mumbai; M G R University, Chennai etc. as Member/Member Co-Ordinator of National Assessment & Accreditation Council (NAAC).
Prof Bhatnagar organized 11 National and International conferences, completed 10 research projects independently as PI. While enjoying the position of senior most Professor in College of Biotechnology, he worked as Chief Personnel Officer and Director Placement for three consecutive years; as Head, departments of Cell Biology and the department of Commercial Biotechnology. Also entrusted to administratively monitor as Head, College of Basic Sciences and Humanities in the university and was appointed Dean, College of Biotechnology subsequently. He published/edited 12 books, Chaired and delivered Keynote addresses and Invited lectures in large number of National and International Conferences organized in India and abroad. Organized International Conference TASARD, India-2017 as Chairman during February 20-22, 2017 at NASC Complex, New Delhi attended by the Ministers, Policy Makers, Educationists, Directors from 28 countries besides 400 delegates from all over the world (www.vegetosindia.org) . He retired as Professor & Dean, College of Biotechnology, S V P University of Agric. & Technology, Meerut on June 30, 2017. To view the profile, please click Profile

Prof Ved Pal Singh did his graduation from Aligarh Muslim University in the year 1972 and moved to G B Pant University of Agriculture & Technology for obtaining his M. Sc. degree in the year 1975. Prof Singh obtained Ph. D. from University of Delhi in 1981 on the topic Investigations on the Phosphatases of Thermoactinomyces vulgaris and became lecturer in the same university in the year 1986. Prof Singh was promoted to the post of Professor in 2007 and was awarded Fellow of Linnean Society of London and remained Foundation Follow, International Society of Plant Morphologists; Fellow, International Society for Conservation of Natural Resources; Commonwealth Academic Staff Fellow at University of Strathclyde, Glasgow (U. K.); UNESCO/ROSTSCA Young Scientist Awardee in the field of Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology and the British Council Visitor. Recently he got superannuation from the post of Professor & Head, Department of Botany, University of Delhi, Delhi.
Prof Singh has published large number of papers in international and national journal besides many book chapters.

Prof D K Srivastava was born on 22.02.1956 and obtained his Postgraduation and PhD degrees from Gujarat University, Ahmedabad. He worked as a postdoctoral fellow in M S University, Vadodra and Institute of Molecular Genetics, Moscow during 1984-1989.
Prof Srivastava started his career as Assistant Professor in Y S Parmar University of Horticulture & Forestry, Solan (Himachal Pradesh) in 1989 and became Professor of Plant Biotechnology in the year 2001 and worked as Director Extension from 2015 till the date of his superannuation.
Prof Srivastava availed USSR Govt. Scholarship for Post doctoral Research from 1986-1989 and visited Moscow, Bulgaria, USA and China for various academic programs. He produced 9 Ph. Ds and published nearly 100 research papers in the journals of national and international repute besides writing book chapters and delivering invited lectures in conferences. Prof Srivastava completed 4 major research projects as Principal Investigator and remained associated in large number of projects in India and abroad.

Dr Deepika Abrol was born on 7.02.1978 and obtained her post graduate and Ph. D. degrees from M J P Rohilkhand University, Bareilly. She worked as Project assistant in UGC Projects and was the founder faculty of the department of Biotechnology, Bareilly College, Bareilly and served as Assistant Professor for many years. She published many research papers in international journals besides writing book chapters. She attended many conferences and worked efficiently as the members of Organizing committees for the conferences organized by the Society for Plant Research. She was conferred Young Scientist Award-2007” in the conference held at S V P University of Agriculture & Technology, Meerut.
Dr Abrol had been instrumental in bringing VEGETOS to the present get up. Initially she worked as Business Manager of Society for Plant Research and as Copy Editor of the journal VEGETOS. Presently she is the Treasurer of the Society for Plant Research.
Her field of interest is molecular characterization and algae bio-fuel. She has international publications and is the author of Laboratory Manual in Biotechnology.