PAU student honoured with Prime Minister Fellowship

Ludhiana, August 25, 2022: Arpana Sharma, a student of Department of Plant Pathology, Punjab Agricultural University (PAU), has brought laurels to the University by bagging the prestigious Prime Minister Fellowship for her doctoral research. The Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB) of the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, in collaboration with the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and a private partner “Agricare Organic Farms”, has awarded this fellowship for a period of four years. Arpana will work on “Race Profiling in Ascochyta rabiei(Pass.) Labr. and its Gene Expression in Chickpea (Cicer aretium L.)” to identify the existing racial pattern of Ascochyta rabiei and resistant candidate gene(s) against Ascochyta blight (AB) in chickpea, under the supervision of Dr.Upasana Rani,Principal Plant Pathologist (Pulses), Department of Plant Breeding and Genetics and Dr.Amandeep Mittal, Fruit Molecular Geneticist, School of Agricultural Biotechnology.

Dr. Upasana Rani informed that the present study has been undertaken to characterize diverse A. rabiei isolates obtained from North-western parts of the country which will help us to identity type of resistance in chickpea cultivars and to find out how pathogen is behaving under different environments and genetic backgrounds.It will further help us to strengthen breeding programme for effective management of the disease. Dr. Amandeep Mittal highlighted that this study will further help us to gain insight to understand the molecular mechanisms of variability in AB due to continuous evolution of pathogen population w.r.t. space and time andwill aid us to identify candidate genes imparting resistanceand to develop markers against AB. These studies will help us to enhance the understanding of host pathogen interaction and virulence pattern of A. rabiei.

Dr.SS Gosal, worthy Vice-Chancellor, Dr. (Mrs.) Sandeep Bains, Dean Postgraduate Studies, Dr AS Dhatt, Director of Research and Dr PPS Pannu, Head, Department of Plant Pathology, congratulated the student and her guides as well as her Advisory Committee members for this achievement and wished them success in their future endeavors.