An Indian scientist involved in the genome sequencing of groundnut has been awarded “Qilu Friendship Award” by China.
Rajeev Varshney, Research Program Director-Genetic Gains at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), in the outskirts of Hyderabad in Telangana, who closely worked on genome sequencing of the groundnuts in collaboration with the China’s Shandong Peanut Research Institute and Shandong Academy of Agricultural Sciences was the recipient of the award for the year 2016.
According to a statement released by the ICRISAT in Kalaburagi city on Sunday, the award was presented by Zhang Jianguo, Deputy Minister of Human Resources and Social Security, People’s Republic of China and Administrator of State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs, Vice Governor of Shandong Province, Sun Wei.
Qilu Friendship Award is the top award given to foreign experts for their outstanding contributions to Shandong’s economic and social development and conferred on around 20 experts each year.
Dr. Varshney together with his team from ICRISAT has been working with several Chinese partners - Shofine Seeds Co. in Shandong, Oil Crops Research Institute of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Wuhan, Crops Research Institute (CRI) of Guangdong Academy of Agricultural Sciences, BGI-Shenzhen, Millennium Genomics Co. in Guangzhou - to develop genomic resources and deploy them in groundnut breeding.
Decoding peanut genome and its application to understand the geocarpy, oil biosynthesis and allergens was the recent landmark discovery, published in PNAS journal, that was coordinated by Dr. Varshney and his collaborators from SPRI, Shofine Seeds Co., CRI and Millennium Genomics.
Dr. Varshney has been working at ICRISAT for 11 years. He has led several international genome sequencing consortia to decode genome sequences of dryland crops.
ICRISAT is the only Consultative Group of International Agriculture (CGIAR) centre and one of few centres to lead genome sequence of several dryland crops like groundnut, pigeonpea, chickpea, groundnut and pearl millet and has published several research papers in the top journals such as Nature Biotechnology, Nature Genetics, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences(PNAS), the release said.
