Biology and Breeding of Food Legumes

Dr. Aditya Pratap, born on October 18, 1976, is working as Principal Scientist in the Crop Improvement Division, ICAR-Indian Institute of Pulses Research, Kanpur (IIPR). Holding a brilliant academic and service record, he has worked on genetic improvement of crop plants including Vigna species, wheat, triticale, rapeseed-mustard and chickpea. He has been associated with the development and release of 14 crop varieties including 9 in green gram, 1 in chickpea, 3 in rapeseed-mustard and one in facultative winter wheat including world's first earliest variety of mungbean, Virat, which matures in 52-55 days. He has executed several national and international collaborative projects as a team leader and successfully established the "International Mung bean Improvement Network" along with several international partners. To his credit, he has >190 publications including research papers in several high-impact journals. He has edited 6 books published by Springer, CABI and Elsevier. His research interests include distant hybridization, doubled haploidy breeding, plant tissue culture and molecular breeding. He is the recipient of the prestigious Norman E. Borlaug International Agricultural Science and Technology Fellowship, USA and also the ICAR-Lal Bahadur Shastri Outstanding Young Scientist Award. The mung bean improvement programme led by him at the IIPR has won him the Best Centre Award 2018. He is on board several reputed international research journals including Frontiers in Plant Science, Frontiers in Genetics, PLOS One, BMC Plant Biology, Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution besides being the General Secretary of the Indian Society of Pulses Research and Development.

Dr Jitendra Kumar is Principal Scientist in the Division of Crop Improvement at Indian Institute of Pulses Research, Kanpur. He has over 17 years of research experience in plant breeding using both conventional and molecular marker-assisted breeding approaches on various crops including sunflower, medicinal and aromatic, cereal and pulse crops. Seven high yielding varieties of lentil have been developed by him so far, with several other varieties in the pipeline. Dr. Kumar also studied the genetics of important traits of lentil and exploited wild species in lentil breeding, leading to the development of a number of prebreeding lines for genetic improvement. He has more than 120 publications including research and review articles in international journals, book chapters, meeting reports, popular articles, and bulletins. His current priorities include use of the molecular marker technology in conventional lentil breeding program for making genetic improvement towards biotic and abiotic stresses.

Dr. Shiv Kumar has expertise including crop improvement through resistance breeding, widening the genetic base through pre-breeding, and development of genetic and genomic resources in food legumes. During the 30 years of his professional career, he has contributed to the development of 51 lentil, 5 mung bean, 2 urdbean, 1 rice, and 3 grass pea varieties and published 196 peer-reviewed journal articles, 77 book chapters, 11 books, 7 technical bulletins, and 2 training manuals. Presently, Dr. Kumar leads ICARDA's Food legumes program from Rabat, Morocco which aims to deliver improved germplasm of lentil, kabuli chickpea, faba bean and grass pea to national partners in South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, West Asia, and North Africa. He works on developing short duration climate smart varieties of lentil and grass pea with high iron and zinc content for sustainable intensification of cereal based cropping systems.

Rajeev Kumar Varshney FRS is an Indian agricultural scientist, specializing in genomics, genetics, molecular breeding and capacity building in developing countries. Varshney is currently serving as Director, Western Australian State Agricultural Biotechnology Center; Director, Centre for Crop & Food Innovation; and International Chair in Agriculture & Food Security with the Food Futures Institute at Murdoch University, Australia since Feb 2022.[1] Before joining Murdoch University, Australia he served International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), a global agriculture R&D institute, for more than 16 years in different scientific and research leadership roles including Research Program Director for three global research programs- Grain Legumes, Genetic Gains and Accelerated Crop Improvement Program. He has the onus of establishing and nurturing the Center of Excellence in Genomics & Systems Biology (CEGSB), a globally recognized center for genomics research at ICRISAT that made impacts on improving agriculture and development of human resources in several countries including India, China, Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Nigeria, Ghana, Mali, Senegal, Burkina Faso, etc. Varshney holds Adjunct/Honorary/Visiting Professor positions at 10 academic institutions in Australia, China, Ghana, Hong Kong and India, including The University of Western Australia, University of Queensland, West Africa Centre for Crop Improvement (University of Ghana), University of Hyderabad, Chaudhary Charan Singh University and Professor Jayashankar Telangana State Agricultural University. Varshney is a globally recognized leader for his work on genome sequencing, cataloguing and utilizing genetic diversity, genomics-assisted breeding, seed system and capacity building in developing countries. He has made centrally important contributions towards improving food and nutrition security in India and several countries in Africa and Asia by assembling genomes, developing genomic resources and integrating genomic technologies in crop improvement programs in many tropical crops, and delivering several superior crop varieties to some of the world's poorest farmers. His research group at present at Murdoch University is working on improving wheat, legume and horticultural crops for a range of agronomic, and abiotic stress tolerance traits by developing and deploying novel genomics and pre-breeding approaches such as pangenomics, haplotype cataloguing and functional genomics approaches.