Conservation and Utilization of Threatened Medicinal Plants

Dr. P.E.Rajasekharan is a Principal Scientist at the ICAR Indian Institute of Horticultural Research Bangaluru. Dr. Rajasekharan completed his PhD in in vitro conservation of threatened medicinal plants at the Department of Botany, Bangalore University and is known for his contributions to the area of Plant Genetic Resources, i.e. in vitro conservation and cryopreservation of horticultural crops. Also holding 3 Post graduate Diploma one in Intellectual Property Rights from National Law School of India University and   Post Graduate Diploma in Human Resources Management from Indira Gandhi National Open University (New Delhi) and another   Postgraduate diploma in Ecology and environment from Indian Institute of Ecology, New Delhi. He supervised 20 M. Pharm students of Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences. He also wrote many review articles and book chapters. He participated in various national and international symposia and seminars and presented the research results on cryopreservation and in vitro conservation. In addition, he has developed globally applicable cryopreservation protocols for the conservation of nuclear genetic diversity (NGD) in pollen of important vegetable, ornamental and endangered medicinal species. He also worked on conservation of threatened medicinal plants and established Field Gene Bank for the same at ICAR-IIHR, Bengaluru. He also developed conservation protocols for several RET medicinal plant species including Nothapodytes foetida. Recently he worked on Madhuca insignis rediscovered after 120 years and reintroduced the same in the natural habitats. He currently teaches courses on Plant Genetic Resources and Intellectual Property Rights in Agriculture. Dr. Rajasekharan has more than 200 articles and two books to his credit one book he co-edited with Dr.Ramanatha Rao for Springer Nature entitled Conservation and utilization of horticultural genetic resources. He is an expert reviewer for several internationalpeer-reviewed journals, and sits on the editorial board of several journals. He is a Fellow of the Indian Society of Plant Genetic Resources and Indian Association for Angiosperm Taxonomy.

Dr. Shabir Hussain Wani is senior Assistant professor at Mountain Research Centre for Field Crops, Khudwani –192101, Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology of Kashmir, J&K, India. He received Ph.D. degree in plant breeding and genetics on “transgenic rice for abiotic stress tolerance” from the Punjab Agricultural University Ludhiana, India. After obtaining his Ph.D. he worked as research associate in the Biotechnology Laboratory, Central Institute of Temperate Horticulture (ICAR), Srinagar, India. He then joined the Krishi Vigyan Kendra (Farm Science Centre) as program coordinator at Senapati, Manipur, India. He teaches courses related to plant breeding, seed science and technology, and stress breeding and has published more than 100 papers/chapters in journals and books of international and national repute. He served as guest editor and reviews editor for journal Frontier in Plant Science (2015-2018). He has also edited several books on current topics in crop improvement for abiotic stress tolerance published by Springer Nature and CRC press USA. His Ph.D. research fetched first prize in the North Zone Competition, at national level, in India. He was awarded Young Scientist Award from the Society for Promotion of Plant Sciences, Jaipur, India, in 2009. He is a fellow of the Society for Plant Research, India. Recently he also received Young Scientist Award (Agriculture) 2015 from Society for Plant Research, Meerut, India. He also served as visiting Scientist at Department of Plant Soil and Microbial Sciences, Michigan State University, USA under the UGC Raman Post-Doctoral Fellowship programme. Currently, he is in charge of Wheat improvement programme at MRCFC Khudwani SKAUST Kashmir.