Chandigarh February 5, 2022
Prof Kashmir Singh, Department of Biotechnology, Panjab University Chandigarh have been sanctioned the project on “To study the crosstalk between long non-coding RNAs and MYB transcription factors for enhancement of drought tolerance in Brassica sp” by SERB, Govt Of India. The cost of the project is 50 lac and it will be for three years duration. Indian economy heavily depends on agriculture which is immensely affected by various abiotic stress factors. Brassica juncea (Indian mustard) has high socio-economic importance and is used for food, fodder, condiment and oil. Owing to global climatic change, yield of both irrigated and rainfed mustard will be affected in future. Hence, there is a need to study the genes empowering drought tolerance and other abiotic factors in this plant to meet the growing demand for food.
Dr Singh informed that this research could help improve the agricultural profits in the long run. In their previous studies, Dr Singh’s lab have already identified B. juncea lncRNAs that have been annotated to be involved in numerous biological processes in response to drought. Now through the proposed project, they aim to leverage the lncRNA-mediated regulation of gene expression in B. juncea to improve drought tolerance in the plant. This project would widen the horizon of experimental efforts being made by our scientific community at the national and international levels to tackle the problem of crop stress-tolerance.
Dr Singh has more than 16 years of experience of working in the field of plant sciences, he has completed 12 research projects funded by various funding agencies of Govt of India. He has published more than 100 research papers in international journals. He is recipient of international fellowships and worked in different countries such as Poland, USA and Canada. He has produced more than 20Ph.D students till now and 7 are working in his lab.
