Agricultural science plays a central role in ensuring a sustainable and secure food future. By improving crop productivity, enhancing nutritional value, and reducing the environmental footprint of farming it helps address some of the most pressing global challenges. As climate change accelerates the spread of pests and diseases with reduced nutritional value, developing resilient crops has become more critical than ever.
Our work supports innovations that make agriculture more sustainable and future ready. This includes advancing biological nitrogen fixation solutions to reduce dependence on chemical fertilizers and improving how plants absorb and utilize nitrogen. We also fund research focused on genetic enhancements and beneficial microbes that strengthen nitrogen fixation. In addition, we support projects aimed at improving resistance to major crop diseases such as blast in pearl millet and bacterial wilt in tomatoes.
Through these efforts, we aim to empower farmers with more robust, resource-efficient, and climate-resilient crop systems.
Role of Rhodotorula mucilaginosa JGTA-S1 in the release of its endosymbiotic microbes to modulate rice microbiota and improve nitrogen nutrition by bacterial-fungal-plant three kingdom interaction.
University of Calcutta
Improving rice genetics and its ecosystem through genome engineering and bioagents to reduce dependency on chemical N2 fertilizer
ICAR-NRRI, Cuttack
The investigation of evolutionary connection between thermotolerance and dispersal syndrome in a model dipteran insect
IISER, Berhampur
Deciphering marker – trait associations for blast disease resistance in pearl millet
Indian Institute of Millets Research, Hyderabad
Engineering bacterial wilt resistance in cultivated tomato genotype using lectins as a tool
IISER, Tirupati
Engineering rice plant capable of synthesizing its own nitrogen fertilizer via integrating the genetic networks to accommodate N2-fixing rhizobial symbiosis
The Energy and Resource Institute, Delhi
Increasing nitrogen use efficiency via modulation of Phytoglobins and NOx scavenging mechanisms
NIPGR, Delhi