Prof. Chittaranjan Kole is an internationally reputed scientist with an illustrious professional career spanning over forty years and globally recognized for his original contributions in the fields of plant genomics, biotechnology and molecular breeding leading to the publication of more than 150 quality research articles. He has edited over 170 books for the leading publishers of the world including Springer, Wiley-Blackwell and Taylor and Francis Group. His scientific contributions and editing acumen have been appreciated by seven Nobel Laureates including Profs. Norman Borlaug, Arthur Kornberg, Werner Arber, Phillip Sharp, Günter Blobel, Lee Hartwell and Roger Kornberg. He has been honored with a number of fellowships, honorary fellowships, and national and international awards including the 'Outstanding Crop Scientist Award' conferred by the International Crop Science Society. Prof. Kole has served in all prestigious positions in academia including as Vice-Chancellor of the BC Agricultural university and Project Coordinator of Indo-Russian Center of Biotechnology in India, and Director of Research of the Institute of Nutraceutical Research of Clemson University, in USA. He worked also in the Pennsylvania State University and Clemson University as Visiting Professor in USA. He was awarded with the Raja Ramanna Fellow by the Department of Energy, Government of India. He is also heading the International Climate-Resilient Crop Genomics Consortium, International Phytomedomics and Nutriomics Consortium and Genome India International as their Founding President. Prof. Kole has recently established the Prof. Chittaranjan Kole Foundation for Science and Society and working for his Founding Chairman. Dr C. Bharadwaj is a Principal Scientist, division of Genetics, ICAR-IARI and Chickpea Breeder with 27 years of scientific experience in breeding legumes and pulses. He is also the Honorary Adjunct Associate Professor, The UWA Institute of Agriculture, University of Western Australia, Perth. Focusing on marginal and sub marginal farmers he has developed 18 high yielding climate resilient chickpea varieties and credited with developing the First Marker Assisted Bred Chickpea variety for drought (Pusa Chickpea 10216) and for wilt (Pusa Chickpea Manav). He published 180 papers in very high impact journals like Nature , Nature Genetics, apart from various book chapters, books and technical reports. He was awarded with four International and five national awards including the prestigious Springer vegetos Dr M S Swaminathan Award 2023, Best Scientist Award of ICAFS-2K23 in 2023, Agrivision Eminent Scientist award 2022 and Agri Watch Research Recognition Award 2009. He has guided 10 doctoral and 9 post graduate students as chairperson. He is Fellow of Indian Society of Pulses Research and Development, Kanpur, India, Fellow Sringer Nature-Vegetos and Fellow of Indian Society Genetics and Plant Breeding, New Delhi India. He is member of Transgenic Evaluation Committee of DBT and Expert Member in DBT for project evaluation. He is the Core Advisory Group member for varietal descriptors development for chickpea, lentil, cowpea for Bioversity International. He is the member, Editorial Board, Frontiers in Genetics; Frontiers in Plant sciences; Indian Journal of Genetics & Plant Breeding; Legume Research and Current Agriculture. Dr Abhimanyu Sarkar is a molecular biologist with over thirty years of experience. He is Group Leader-Legume Genetics at NIAB, Cambridge, U.K. His areas of expertise include legume biology, speed breeding, gene discovery and genomics. Before joining NIAB, he worked at the John Innes Centre, Norwich, U.K. in Prof. Cathie Martin's group on the biology and genomics of the orphan legume grass pea (Lathyrus sativus). The group was responsible for sequencing the genome of grass pea, as well as developing various biological resources such as mutagenized populations, recombinant inbred lines (RILs) and an EcoTILLING platform for grass pea. He had previously worked in New Zealand on white clover (Trifolium repens), a forage legume. He has also worked extensively on the molecular biology of various invertebrate organisms, including developing tools and methodologies for insect transgenesis using DNA transposable elements. He obtained his Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of Maryland, College Park, U.S.A., a Master's degree in Genetics from the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, Pusa, New Delhi, India and a Bachelor's degree in Agriculture from the Govind Ballabh Pant University of Agriculture and Technology. Pantnagar, India.
