Basic Laboratory Skills

The book Handbook on Basic Laboratory Skills is designed to serve two primary goals: (i) for teaching basic concepts of laboratory techniques and (ii) following good laboratory practices while working in laboratory or doing research. The book presents the importance of laboratory skills/practices and biosafety issues to students and researchers. The chapters included in this book cover information on handling of laboratory chemicals, equipment, preparation of buffers, media, basics of seed testing, biosafety, etc. which constitute curriculum of the course Basic Concepts in Laboratory Techniques (PGS504, 0L 1P) for Post-Graduate students of the Indian National Agricultural Research System (NARS) including Deemed Universities, State Agricultural Universities (SAUs), and Central Agricultural Universities (CAUs).

Suresh Kumar is Principal Scientist, USDA Norman E. Borlaug Fellow, Indo-US Science & Technology Forum (IUSSTF) Fellow, INSA Vising Fellow, and One of the Top 2% Most Influential Scientists of the World (2023) at the Division of Biochemistry, ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi. He completed M. Sc. (Plant Biotechnology) from Centre for Plant Molecular Biology, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, and Ph. D. (Mol. Biol. & Biotech) from the Post-Graduate School, ICAR-I.A.R.I., New Delhi. After completing his Post-Doctoral research at University of Missouri, Columbia; University of California, Reverside and Purdue University, Indiana, USA, he is working on epigenomics of abiotic stress tolerance in plants as Principal Investigator. He has been involved in teaching and research guidance to M. Sc. and Ph. D. students of the Graduate School, ICAR-I.A.R.I., New Delhi. He is Course Leader for UG and PG courses, including the Basic Concepts in Laboratory Techniques (PGS 504), offered by the Graduate School, ICAR-I.A.R.I., New Delhi, India.

Simardeep Kaur is working as an ARS-Scientist (Plant Biochemistry) at ICAR-Research Complex for North Eastern Hill Region, Umiam, Meghalaya, India. She had completed her graduation in Biochemistry (2017) from Punjab Agricultural University (PAU), Ludhiana, then attended Post Graduate School PAU for her M.Sc. in Plant Biochemistry (2019), where she worked on Biochemical basis of leaf-blight resistance in barley and published her significant findings in high impact journal. During her Masters she received Gold medal for excellence in chemistry/biochemistry, PAU Merit fellowship, Pyara Singh Parmar award, and qualified CSIR-JRF (NET). Later, she completed her Ph.D. (Plant Biochemistry) at ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), New Delhi. She is recipient of JRF and SRF from the CSIR during her Ph.D. She has also several cleared other national level examinations like GATE (Life Sciences), ICAR-NET, JNUEE etc. She also grabbed the opportunity to continue part of her Ph.D. program at the Utah State University, U.S.A. on receiving the most prestigious Nehru-Fulbright Doctoral fellowship (2022-23). She has published several research and review papers in high impact journals including Planta, Journal of Plant Growth Regulation, Current Plant Biology, Heliyon etc. She was also awarded the Springer Nature Young Scientist Award for her Ph.D. work at an international conference. Currently, she is developing NIRS-based predictive models for key nutritional traits in orphan or underutilized crops of Southeast Asia. In addition, she is investigating the effects of concurrent abiotic stress responses in indigenous rice varieties of Northeast India.