The Beans and the Peas: From Orphan to Mainstream Crops

Dr. Aditya Pratap is a Principal Scientist in the Crop Improvement Division, ICAR-Indian Institute of Pulses Research, Kanpur. He has worked on genetic improvements of crop plants including Vigna species, wheat, triticale, rapeseed-mustard and chickpea and been associated with the development and release of 13 crop varieties including 8 in green gram, 3 in rapeseed-mustard and one in facultative winter wheat including worlds’ first earliest variety of mungbean, Virat. He has been team lead for several national and international collaborative projects and has been one of the leading partners in “Establishing International Mungbean Improvement Network. He has >150 publications and has edited 5 books. His research interests include distant hybridization, doubled haploidy breeding, plant tissue culture and molecular breeding. He is the recipient of the prestigious Norman E. Borlaug International Agricultural Science and Technology Fellowship, USA and also the ICAR-Lal Bahadur Shastri Outstanding Young Scientist Award.

Dr Sanjeev Gupta is the Project Coordinator, ICAR- All India Coordinated Research Project on MULLaRP Pulse crops (Mungbean, Urdbean, Lentil, Lathyrus, Rajmash and Peas) at Indian Institute of Pulses Research (IIPR), Kanpur. His years of research experience have resulted nearly a dozen high yielding cultivars in grain legumes. He developed world’s earliest maturing mungbean variety‘Virat’. As a national coordinator on pulses he has participated in several national and international projects including as principal Investigator on Molecular marker assisted breeding for MYMIV and powdery mildew resistance, Shuttle Breeding Programme among SAARC Nations and Climate Resilient Agriculture Research. His special interest in molecular breeding led to the mapping and tagging of Yellow mosaic resistant gene in Vigna mungo. He has published extensively in internationally recognized peer-reviewed journals and has edited six books on pulses. He is the recipient of several awards for his research and literary contributions.