Personnel Exchange Programme-Indo-German Joint Research collaboration - Root hydraulics and its possible use in crop improvement programs

This project involves utilization of interdisciplinary expertise in soil physics, plant physiology and biological systems modeling to progress understanding of water movement through soil-plant-atmosphere continuum with emphasis on characterization of rhizosphere/root hydraulic processes and their impact on drought adaptation.

The AVISA project

Genetic biofortification of carotenoid content of grain legumes for novel market types as high-value fresh vegetables and in processed foods

BBSRC-Bioscience for future & TIGR2ESS: Transforming India's Green Revolution by Research and Empowerment for Sustainable food Supplies

DST-Early Career Research Award- Derivation of algorithms for automated and accelerated phenotyping using high throughput phenotyping platform-Leasy scan, to understand and enhance environmental adaptations in sorghum

DST-SERB (N-PDF): Phenotyping of foxtail millet genotypes under high-throughput platform for water use, yield related traits and phosphorous deficiency (2019-21)

DST-SERB (N-PDF): Adaptability of mungbean [Vigna radiata (L.) R. Wilczek] varieties for drought environments (2018-20)

DST-SERB (N-PDF): Plant architecture suitable for very high planting densities to enhance sorghum grain and fodder yield (2017-19)

European Research Council Grant- Contribute to a long-term perspective on human adaptation and establishment of resilient cultivation systems in dry lands

CGIAR Research Program on Grain Legumes and Dryland Cereals

The contribution of the group to the scope of these two large CG-wide initiative follows the main research streams , therefore essentially around:

• Trait dissection of plant adaptation to water limitation and high evaporative demand conditions
• Modelling activities for priority setting of critical breeding and agronomic management targets

BREAD - ABRDC: A reverse genetics platform to characterize adaptations to drought and improved nutrient density of chickpea.

Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.) is the second most important food legume worldwide. Green seeded chickpea and vegetable chickpea is a plant-based protein diet having good nutritive value. Higher nutrient density for carotenoids such as beta-carotene that are observed in the green-seeded chickpea could contribute to improving the nutritional status of consumers.

Kirkhouse Trust - Benchmarking Traits Controlling the Plant Water Budget in “Orphan” Legumes

The difficulty of comparing crops species for their “drought tolerance” is that “tolerance” is often confused with simple differences in plant water needs. For instance peanut develops a larger leaf area, has longer duration and higher yield potential than cowpea, but needs more water to fulfil its growth cycle. Both peanut and cowpea are considered drought tolerant, but each species fits specific environments where the rainfall and length of the growing season matches their water and duration requirement.

DST - Integrating Bio-treated Wastewater Reuse with Enhanced Water Use Efficiency to Support the Green Economy in EU and India

The participation to this large project is through Work Package number 4, which involve collaborative activities between several labs in India and Europe. Below are the respective Europe and India packages

ACIAR - Improving Postrainy Sorghum Varieties to Meet the Growing Grain and Fodder Demand in India – Phase 2

Postrainy sorghum is important for about 5 million households of India. Both grain and stover residues play an almost equally important role in the sorghum value chain, and the price of stover is linked to stover quality. Postrainy sorghum production is constrained by water limitation. The purpose of that project is therefore two-folds: (i) generate cultivars with higher productivity and quality under such limitation; (ii) generate knowledge to speed up the generation of improved cultivars for similar constraints across the world.

USAID-Feed the Future Innovation Lab – Development of Abiotic Stress Tolerant Millet for Africa and South Asia

Millet plays different roles in food security. It remains a staple of millions among the poorest in both India and Africa. At the same time, its growing value in the food and feed industry offers opportunities for income generation. This economic value is evident in the growth in production in both regions, even if acreage has declined. While among the staples most adapted to harsh environments, productivity gains from increased and broad stress tolerance will be significant.

USAID - Feed the Future Innovation Lab – Climate Resilient Sorghum

The drier parts of the world are where development challenges are the greatest and market failure is most acute, and few if any of these are more urgent than the ‘Sahel’ region of Africa. Its unusual tolerance of low inputs, especially water, make the cereal crop sorghum essential to human populations in the Sahel, where episodic drought is a fact of life. Despite its importance, sorghum improvement has lagged that of maize, wheat and rice, largely if not entirely due to greater effort invested in the ‘Big Three’.

USAID - Feed the Future Innovation Lab – Climate Resilient Chickpea

Chickpea is the world’s second most important pulse legume, with particular importance in the semi-arid tropics of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Like the majority of cultivated legumes, chickpea has exceedingly narrow genetic and phenotypic diversity. This has consequences for breeding of climate-resilient crop varieties, because much of the historical phenotypic plasticity necessary to tolerate environmental extremes has been lost through domestication.