Ludhiana: Faculty and students of the department of plant breeding and genetics, College of Agriculture, Punjab Agricultural University (PAU), have earned several national-level honours at the National oilseeds conference on “Edible oil security for Atmanirbhar Bharat,” held recently at ICAR-IARI, New Delhi. The awards recognised significant academic, research and professional contributions in oilseeds research.Dr Virender Sardana, former principal agronomist/incharge (oilseeds), and Dr Pushp Sharma, principal physiologist (oilseeds)/head, Botany, were presented the Lifetime Achievement Award for their outstanding contributions to rapeseed-mustard research. In addition, Dr Sarwan Kumar, principal entomologist (oilseeds), and Dr Chhaya Atri, senior oilseed breeder, received the SRMR Fellow Award from the Society for Rapeseed-Mustard Research (SRMR), Bharatpur, in recognition of their contributions to research and development in the crop.The university’s younger researchers were also recognised. Dr Kusum Rana, a former PhD student of the Oilseeds section, received the young scientist award. In the oral presentation category, former PhD students Dr Sandeep Kaur and Dr Simarjeet Kaur won the best oral presentation awards. In the poster category, Dr Priyanka Upadhayay received the best PhD thesis award, while Sonam was honoured with the best MSc thesis award.PAU students also excelled at the international conference on “Climate-resilient agriculture for sustainable development: Innovations and solutions,” held recently at the Institute of Agricultural Sciences, BHU, Varanasi. In the oral presentation section, PhD students Ananya Mahanta and Shivani Upadhyay won the best oral presentation award. Mahanta presented her research on evaluating heat stress resilience and processing quality in T. sphaerococcum for climate-smart wheat improvement. Upadhyay presented her work on developing pre-harvest sprouting tolerance and rust-resistant wheat germplasm using gene pyramiding. In the poster category, six PhD students from PAU secured the best poster awards.
