“Genetic Enhancement of Wheat Utilizing Tools of classical Cytogenetics and Modern Biotechnology: Prospects and challenges”

 

The Department of Biotechnology organized a Guest Lecture by Prof. Prem P.Jauhar on the topic-“Genetic Enhancement of Wheat Utilizing Tools of classical Cytogenetics and Modern Biotechnology: Prospects and challenges”, on the 20th of December, 2007.

The lecture included an interesting account of how transgenic technology was used in accelerating genetic enhancement of wheat. Wild relatives of wheat carrying genes for agronomic traits like resistance to Fusarium Head Blight- a devastating disease of wheat were used as a source of such genes which were incorporated into the chromosome of the durum wheat.

Dr. Jauhar’s research career spans over a period of 40 years. He has worked in three continents- Asia, Europe and North America. The main thrust of his research is to produce improved wheat germplasm by transferring desirable traits from wild relatives of wheat andthrough genetic transformation. His works have been published in prestigious International Journals including Nature, Chromosome, Genome, Mutation Research, etc. 

The lecture was attended by the students and faculty members of the Science stream.