New Delhi: Rajeev Varshney, an Indian agricultural scientist who contributed to decoding the genome of legumes and developing new varieties of chickpea, has been awarded the Honorary Medal of the Royal Society – UK’s National Academy of Sciences – for his work towards food and nutritional security. Fellow has been selected.
In a statement on Tuesday, the Royal Society announced a list of 80 new Fellows – researchers, innovators and communicators from around the world – elected this year. Varshney is the only Indian in the list and only the fourth Indian agricultural scientist to be selected after BP Paul (1972), MS Swaminathan (1973) and Gurdev Khush (1995).
The statement quoted Varshney as saying, “I am thrilled to join the ranks and luminaries like Norman Borlaug, MS Swaminathan, Jim Peacock, Gurdev Khush, who have been an inspiration and role model not only for me but for all agricultural scientists have been models. World.”
Varshney is currently at Murdoch University in Australia as Director of the Center for Crop and Food Innovation, Western Australian State Agricultural Biotechnology Center and International Chair in Agriculture and Food Security.
The Royal Society’s statement also quoted Himanshu Pathak—secretary of India’s Department of Agricultural Research and Education and director general of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research—as saying it was “a great recognition for Indian agricultural science that a work-based The work done by Indian agricultural scientists in India has been recognized by the Royal Society, a top scholarly body in the world.
Established in 1660, the Royal Society is the oldest continuously existing scientific academy. It unites some of the most renowned scientists, engineers and technologists from around the world. tactfully. There are about 1,700 fellows and foreign members, including about 85 Nobel laureates.
Each year, a minimum of 52 Fellows and a maximum of 10 Foreign Fellows are selected from a pool of approximately 800 candidates proposed by the current Fellowship.
Past fellows and foreign members of the Royal Society include Charles Darwin, Lise Meitner, Albert Einstein, Dorothy Hodgkin and Stephen Hawking, while Isaac Newton served as its president in the early 18th century.
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‘Focus on sustainability’
Varshney’s team at Murdoch University is currently working on improving wheat, legume and horticultural crops for agronomic and abiotic stress tolerance properties by developing and deploying novel genomics approaches, the Royal Society statement said.
After working for 17 years at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), Hyderabad, he moved to his present place of work. During his time at ICRISAT, he worked in collaboration with research institutes of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, State Agricultural Universities and other organizations in India and abroad.
Varshney is credited with decoding the genomes of 12 tropical crops, analyzing genetic variation in over 5,000 bean lines and dissecting over 30 agronomic traits at the molecular level in three legume crops – chickpea, pigeon pea and groundnut Is.
Varshney’s contribution has helped India release eight chickpea varieties for drought tolerance and resistance to fusarium wilt, two high-oleic varieties of groundnut and a fusarium wilt-resistant pigeon pea variety, the statement said. .
Fusarium wilt is a fungal disease caused by several forms of soil-dwelling fungi. fusarium oxysporumwhile hhigh-oleic Oil is any oil that is high in monounsaturated fat.
Varshney and his team have been part of programs to train hundreds of scientists in developing countries in Africa and South America, the statement said.
It quoted Andrew Deeks, vice-chancellor of Murdoch University, as saying that Varshney has focused on sustainability throughout her research, which has impacted “the lives of some of the most vulnerable people in the world”.
“She is a very fitting recipient of this high honor and we are very proud to have her as Murdoch’s first Royal Society Fellow,” said Deeks.
Gurdev Khush, FRS and recipient of the World Food Prize, said in a statement: “It is great to be awarded the FRS to Prof. Varshney, who has not only excelled in science but also in its application to solve a downstream problem Food security and poverty alleviation in less affluent regions of the world”.
(Edited by Uttara Ramaswamy)
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