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. Tusar Kanti Behera has 25 years' experience in research on vegetable crops and is presently working as Director, ICAR-Indian Institute of Vegetable Research, Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India. He bred 27 varieties and hybrids in cucurbitaceous and solanaceous vegetable crops and identified six trait specific breeding lines in bitter gourd, Luffa and cucumber. He is involved in genome sequencing of Momordica balsamina L. and comparative study with M. charantia and identified QTLs for gynoecy, fruit length and earliness in bitter gourd using GBS, QTL-seq and GWAS. He also identified candidate gene CsCLV3 for carpel number in cucumber and SMARCA3-like Chromatin remodelling factor for regulating HYPOCOTYL elongation in cucumber. He introgressed F locus and derived 11 Indian tropical gynoecious cucumber lines using MAS and gy-1 (gynoeciuos) gene into 2 commercial bitter gourd varieties. Dr Behera is recipient of Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Fellow and fellow of National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (NAAS), India; Indian Academy of Horticultural Sciences; Indian Society of Genetics and Plant Breeding, Indian Society of Vegetable Science. He received several awards including Dr. B.R. Barwale Award for Excellence in Plant Genetic Resources; Hari Krishna Shastri Memorial Award and Best Teacher Award in Higher Education. Dr Behera published 125 research papers and 12 review papers of international repute and edited four books. He guided 11 Ph. D. and 2 M. Sc. Students as major advisor at the Post Graduate School of ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi. Prashant Kaushik, Ph.D., has a Bachelor of Science degree with Honours in Agriculture, a Postgraduate Diploma in Floriculture and Landscaping, a Master of Science degree in Vegetable Science, and a Master of Business Administration degree in Production and Operations Management. Dr. Kaushik worked as a bioinformatician at Nagano University and Yokohama Ueki in Japan after the completion of his studies for a doctorate in biotechnology at the Universitat Politecnica de Valencia in Spain. He has more than 180 research papers published, in addition to an equal number of research publications that are not indexed. He has published a total of 9 novels and 14 chapters for books. Research in the areas of molecular biology, plant breeding, genomics, landraces, and population genetics are some of his primary areas of interest.
