Any journey starts with zeal and devotion which is the main objective to be achieved. In the year 1988 proposal for establishing the SOCIETY FOR PLANT RESEARCH (SPR) was put forward by PROF S K BHATNAGAR who prepared the documents as Founder Secretary General and got it registered as an autonomous Not for Profit organization under Societies Registration Act XXI of 1860 having its own constitution and bye laws which are amended from time to time by the Executive Council and General Body. The society was established with the view to provide an open platform to the researchers in various disciplines of Botany, Plant Sciences, Environmental Sciences, Plant Biotechnology etc. for publishing their researches in the journal VEGETOS. Besides this, organizing Conferences and Workshops under the aegis of Society for Plant Research (SPR) was an essential activity to facilitate scientific discussions, exchange of view and interaction among scientists.
The journal VEGETOS started its publication in 1988 with usual ups and down amidst some dust of hurdles but no body ever dreamed that this journal will achieve International recognition and will become the most trusted and loved periodical of Plant Sciences and Biotechnology. Since its beginning, many internationally recognized scientists like Prof H S Srivastava, Prof K S Bilgrami, Prof K S Bhargava, Prof C P Mallick, Prof B D Singh, Prof L M S Palni, Prof R B Singh, Prof S K Sopory, Prof T S Kahlon, Prof Manju Sharma, Prof Anupam Varma, Prof M P Yadav, Prof H D Kumar, Prof B R Chaudhary, Prof B M Johri, Prof P K Gupta, Prof R K Gupta, Prof M N Noor and many more renowned signatures of plant sciences, agriculture and biotechnology guided us for further improvement. With an initial membership of 11 persons it has now reached more than 1800 from India and abroad.
The Executive Body of SPR is pleased to announce that the journal VEGETOS, which was started in the year 1988, is now being processed, published and marketed by the global publisher SpringerNature since January 2019 thus strengthening its global authorship. VEGETOS is publishing research articles in all branches of plant science and associated branches of frontier sciences like Plant Biotechnology, Nanotechnology, Genome sequencing etc. We publish Review articles on specific topics. For submission, the scientists may visit the websites www.vegetosindia.org or www.springer.com/42535 .
Society for Plant Research (SPR) had the most dignified authorities like Prof. Jagdish Saran, Patna; Prof K S Bhargava, FNA, Bhagalpur; Prof B D Singh, BHU, Varanasi; Prof M N Noor, Ranchi; Prof I S Dua, Chandigarh; Prof A S Ahluwalia, Chandigarh; Prof R K Gupta, Jammu as the Presidents of SPR for various terms. We are fortunate to have the Patronage of Prof Anupam Varma and Prof M P Yadav who had been our driving force. Prof R R Hanchinal, Former Vice Chancellor, US, Dharwad and Chairman, PPV & FRA is the President, Society for Plant Research (SPR) for the second term starting from 2021 to 2024. Usually the Executive Body is framed by nomination through mutual understanding and for the current term, it has been done unanimously by the duly appointed Election Officer. I feel proud in announcing that Society for Plant Research (SPR) has completed 34 glorious years of service to the scientific community through lot of academic activities and achievements to its credit due to which it could reach to this height and could establish itself at international scenario. We proudly declare that the Silver Jubilee volume of VEGETOS was formally released by Dr S Ayyappan, the then DG, ICAR in NASC Complex, New Delhi during Vice Chancellor's meet. We recently organized an international conference PBSC-2019 in collaboration with Ramnarain Ruia Autonomous College, Mumbai at Welingkar Auditorium, Matunga, Mumbai during December 19-21, 2019 having an excellent scientific gathering and an overwhelming response from many countries. With the start of Covid-19 Pandemic, our activities were also affected adversely like others but despite all odds, our entire team of scientists and technical faculties remained active and organized various virtual meetings, webinars on potential topics including NAAS rating, UGC-CARE evaluation of journals, National Education Policy-2022, EC and Editorial review meetings etc. It is appreciable that our editorial team could maintain regular publication of VEGETOS by processing manuscripts within the specified time limit despite tremendous trouble with the reviewing process due to global health issues with many scientists.