Biotechnology

This section deals with various projects and programmes in relation to molecular characterization of pathogens and microbes, understanding molecular cascade of events occurring during host-pathogen/microbe interaction, identifying regulatory elements induced by various agents in plants such as promoters, small RNAs including miRNA, epigenetic regulatory mechanisms involving in biotic stresses interaction with crops, developing super donors to multi-stress tolerance and genome editing for the purpose of functional validation of novel genes and enhancing biotic stress tolerance.

Characterized begomoviruses infecting mungbean, soybean and tomato at molecular level and found that begomovirus infecting mungbean and soybean in Chhattisgarh identified as Mungbean yellow mosaic India virus (MYMIV) and tomato is Tomato leaf curl Karnataka virus and Tomato leaf curl New Delhi virus
Promoter to Isoflavone synthase (IFS) from mungbean was isolated to validate its induction by MYMIV
Designed CRISPR/Cas9 based constructs for targeted editing of Isoflavone synthase (IFS) in soybean.
Isolated and characterized 32 bacterial endophyte from four plant tissues of six rice varieties grown in the central, eastern and north eastern states of India.
Identiﬁed bacterial endophytes having plant growth promoting attributes and antagonistic potential against bacterial (Xanthomonas oryzae pv oryzae) and soil borne fungal pathogens.
Around 250 Aeromonas and other bacterial strains collected from morbidity and mortality in fresh water fishes. These were tested for 26 morphological and biological characteristics, 31 biochemical characteristics and 24 carbohydrate fermentation tests. Identified multi-drug resistant Raoultella ornithinolytica associated with Indian Major Carp.
Isolation, Extraction, purification and characterization of purple pigment from Chromobacterium species is under way to test its efficacy against various biotic stresses in crops.