PARAMJIT KHURANA, THE LADY OF EXOTIC FRUITS

We all enjoy fruits, don’t we? But we get them only during the season and some fruits grow only in specific weather and people not living in such areas won’t be able to have them fresh from the plant. What is I say that there is a technology to make the plants accustomed to any weather? Interesting right. With this, we can have the plants growing in our backyard and enjoy fresh fruits every season.

Paramjit Khurana, an Indian scientist in Plant Biotechnology is a researcher in the field of creating all-weather crops. This not only lets us enjoy the exotic fruits but also improves the productivity of a country by leaps and bounds and the dependency on a foreign country or a specific area in the country for specific crops.

Paramjit one such scientist who made this possible. She was born on the 15^th of August 1956 in Delhi, she completed her schooling in the Government Girls High School, Jheel, Kurenja in Delhi. She is a graduate of the University of Delhi and has a degree in Botany. She completed her Bachelor of Science (B.Sc) in the year 1975 and Master of Science (M.Sc) in the year 1977. She completed the Master of Philosophy (M.Phil) in the year 1978. She received her Ph.D. in Botany in the year 1983 from the University of Delhi in the year 1983.

She started her career as a Scientist in the University of Delhi in the Unit for Plant Cell and Molecular Biology Unit of the University of Delhi. She was also a lecturer at the Plant Biology Department at the SGTB Khalsa College, from 1984 to 1987. She worked as a research associate in the Michigan State University East Lansing, the USA during 1987-88. She worked as a lecturer for a year post her return, later as a reader for 8 years and as a Professor since then in the Department of Plant Molecular Biology, University of Delhi. She also was the Head of Department from 2004 to 2007

She has worked for more than 2 decades on creating all-weather crops. Her passion earlier was sequencing the rice genome and modifying the wheat seed. She says that she currently working on mulberry alone. Due to drought, salt salinity and alkalinity in the soil, almost 60% of the yield is destroyed. She says that the technology will be making the mulberry crops more tolerant of UV radiations, local weather, and the stress. The modified mulberry crops were tested in the Central Sericultural Research and Training Institute, Mysore. The results turned out to be good and the modified mulberry can be cultivated in the wastelands with minimum groundwater and will be released shortly to the markets.

Paramjit Khurana’s achievements cover

• Wheat and Seri biotechnology

• Comparative Genomics, in wheat biotechnology genetic transformation of Indian wheat for resistance against the cereal cyst nematode and for abiotic stress tolerance

development of mulberry transgenics capable of withstanding salinity and drought stress conditions

• Effective genetic engineering strategies leading to stress tolerance in crop plants and sustaining agriculture under changing climatic conditions, sequencing of chromosome 11 of rice, chromosome 5 of tomato and chloroplast genome of mulberry.

As a professor, she had mentored 10 Post Doctorates, 15 Ph.D. researches, 4 M.Phil students and 20 Master’s students. Her major contribution has been to develop all-weather crops which would enable the rise of India’s crop yield. She says that she will be continuing her research and wishes to benefit people through her research.

Awards and Honors Received

• Fellow, The world Academy of Sciences, Trieste, Italy.
• Fellow, Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi, India.
• Fellow, Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore, India.
• Fellow, The National Academy of Sciences, Allahabad, India.
• Fellow, The National Academy of Agricultural Sciences, India
• J.C. Bose National Fellowship of DST, Government of India (2012-2017; 2017-2021).
• Professor S.K. Sinha Memorial Lecture Award of the Indian Society of Plant Physiology for the year 2017.
• Birbal Sahni Award Medal of the Indian Botanical Society for 2017.
• Shri Ranjan Memorial Lecture Award (2014) by The National Academy of Sciences, India.
• Street Memorial Lecture Award for 2013-14 by the Plant Tissue Culture Association (India).
• Prof. Archana Sharma Memorial Award, Indian Science Congress Association, 2011-2012.
• Rajiv Gandhi Mahila Shakti National Award-2013, conferred by Academy of Grassroots Studies and Research of India, in collaboration with Rajiv Rural Development Foundation, Tirupati.
• Certificate of Honour, Gantavaya Sansthan on International Women’s Day, 2011.

She has also had almost 125 scientific articles in national and international journals. Some of her publications in journals in association with other authors include:

• Identification and characterization of high-temperature stress-responsive genes in bread wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) and their regulation at various stages of development(2011), in Plant Molecular Biology Journal 75: 35-51.
• Development of drought-tolerant transgenic doubled haploid in wheat through Agrobacterium-mediated transformation(2011) in Plant Biotech Journal 9: 408-417.
• Carotenoid biosynthesis genes in rice: Structural analysis, genome-wide expression profiling and phylogenetic analysis(2010) Mol. Genet. Genomics Journal 283: 13-33.
• High-efficiency transformation and selective tolerance against biotic and abiotic stress in mulberry, Morus indica cv. K2, by constitutive and inducible expression of tobacco osmotin(2010) in Transgenic Research Journal 20: 231-246
• Gene expression profile during somatic embryogenesis in wheat (Triticum aestivum) leaf base system(2007) in Plant Mol. Biology Journal 65: 677-692.
• Rosales sister to Fabales: towards resolving the rosid puzzle(2006) in Molecular Phylogenetics & Evolution Journal 44: 488-493
• The chloroplast genome of mulberry (Morus indica cv. K2): complete nucleotide sequence, gene organization and comparative analysis(2006) published in Tree Genetics & Genomes Journal 3: 49-59
• The map-based sequence of the rice genome(2005) as part of the International Rice Genome Sequencing Project, published in Nature 436: 793-800
• Genetic transformation of Indian bread (T. aestivum) and pasta (T. durum) wheat by particle bombardment of mature embryo-derived calli(2003) published in BMC Plant Biology 3: 5-16

Author – B Rishab Baliga

Bibliography:

Prof. (Ms) Paramjit Khurana, http://naasindia.org/detail.php?id=229

Paramjit Khurana, https://dpmb.ac.in/index.php?page=PK

Deepshikha Punj,  Paramjit Khurana’s research aims at creating all-weather crops, September 10, 2011, https://www.indiatoday.in/magazine/science-and-technology/story/20110919-indian-scientists-at-forefront-of-research-paramjit-khurana-747592-2011-09-10

Paramjit Khurana, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paramjit_Khurana

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