17 May 2016|Gurgaon (Manesar) | Amity university Gurgaon
Amity Institute of Biotechnology, Gurgaon organized Guest Lecture on Climate Resilient Crops by Prof. Narendra Tuteja, Director, AIMT
Amity Institute of Biotechnology, Gurgaon organized Guest Lecture on Climate Resilient Crops by Prof. Narendra Tuteja, Director, AIMT
Amity Institute of Biotechnology, Amity University Gurgaon organized Guest Lecture on Climate Resilient Crops by Prof. Narendra Tuteja, Director, AIMT, on 17th May, 2016.
During his talk, Prof. Tuteja mentioned about development of climate resilient crops for more food production under stress to ensure food security. Genetically modified plants acquire new traits which do not occur to them naturally such as high yield, resistance to biotic and a biotic stress. There is a need for genetically modified plants, because world population is increasing at a fast rate and it is expected that by 2050, it will reach 9.6 billion whereas the crop production rate is not even remotely catching up with the population rate and adding stress to the situation is the further loss of crops due to abiotic (heat, cold, drought etc.) and biotic stress (weeds, insects, pathogens). It is imperative to obtain stress tolerant varieties of crops to cope up with the upcoming problem of food security.
There is lot of research going on in the area of Genetically Modified (GM) crops in India but their introduction and acceptance by the people will need lot of time and efforts. He presented development of abiotic stress tolerant crops by over-expressing the genes involved in DNA metabolism pathways like DNA helicase PDH45 from pea in rice. He presented the first direct evidence for the novel role of a pea DNA helicase in salinity stress tolerance.
Prof. Tuteja obtained BSc in 1975, MSc in Biochemistry in 1977 and PhD in Biochemistry in 1977 and DSc (Biochemistry) (2008) degrees from Lucknow University. He worked as Visiting Scientist at National Institutes of Health, Maryland, USA.
Prof. Rajendra Prasad thanked Prof. tuteja for such an elaborative research presentation and interactive session for Amity university Gurgaon.