Patancheru, India
November 13, 2008
A senior scientist of the
International Crops Research
Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), Dr Hari D
Upadhyaya, was honored as a Fellow of the prestigious American
Society of Agronomy at its Annual Meeting held at Houston, USA,
recently. Dr Upadhyaya is Principal Scientist (Genetic
Resources) at ICRISAT.
The American Society of Agronomy (ASG) is a respected
professional society that honors a selected few each year with
this highest recognition. At the felicitation function, Dr
Kenneth J Moore, President of ASC, presented the certificate to
Dr Upadhyaya for his outstanding research contributions that
reflect high quality research.
According to Dr William Dar, Director General of ICRISAT, the
honor for Dr Upadhyaya again strengthens the recognition of the
world-class competence of ICRISAT's scientific team, and the
Institute's contribution to cutting edge scientific innovations.
Dr Upadhyaya's strategy to select "mini core" germplasm is now
an international public good and has globally inspired
scientists as a gateway to exploit diversity in germplasm
collections. A mini core collection is a 1% subset of the total
number of accessions representing the entire genetic diversity
of the total collection. Using the mini core approach, Upadhyaya
has identified trait specific, genetically diverse and
agronomically superior parental lines for plant breeders to
develop high-yielding broad-based cultivars.
Dr Upadhyaya has been a practical plant breeder and has
developed a large number of early-maturing, disease- and
aflatoxin-resistant groundnut breeding lines. Several of these
have traits such as resistance to foliar diseases and fresh seed
dormancy, some of which have been released as varieties in Asia,
sub-Saharan Africa and Oceania.
His genetic studies on resistance to wilt in chickpea provided
scientific basis for breeding wilt resistant cultivars and
contributed to ICRISAT winning the prestigious CGIAR King
Baudouin Award in 2002. Similarly, genetic studies on traits
related to adaptation and productivity contributed significantly
to the breeding of early-maturing cultivars. |
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