In today’s climate change scenario, crops are exposed more frequently to different abiotic stress, such as drought, salinity, elevated temperature, submergence and nutrient deficiencies and thereby limit crop production. In recent years, advances in physiology, biotechnology, molecular biology and genetics have greatly improved our understanding of response of crops to these stresses.
This book on “Abiotic Stress Agriculture” has been prepared covering various aspects including Agronomy, Genetics and Plant Breeding, Biotechnological aspects and Abiotic stresses. This book will be very much useful to the scientists and young researchers to understand different concepts, basics of various stresses and both conventional and molecular approaches in mitigation of different stresses, such as saline stress, flooding stress, temperature and other stresses for the enhancement of crop productivity in a sustainable manner.
In this book , six chapters are dealing with plant breeding aspects, five chapter with biotechnology and molecular biology and ten chapters with reference to different stresses. I am sure that this book will be of great use to the agricultural Faculty, and young researchers in designing their future areas of research in the present scenario of climate change.
Professor Dr. M. Prakash born in 1966, obtained his B.Sc. (Ag.) and M.Sc. (Ag.) from Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, India in 1988 and 1990 respectively. He did his Ph.D. from Annamalai University. He was awarded with National Merit Scholarship, Government of India during 1981-1988 and ICAR Junior Fellowship during 1988-1990. His expertise in abiotic stress tolerance is well-recognised by invitations to serve in the Editorial Board/Committees of several academic journals, awards and fellowships like crop research award in 2004, Best Researcher Awards in Annamalai University in 2010, and fellowship like FELLOW of Indian Society of Plant Physiology, New Delhi in 2015 (FISPP) and Fellow of National Academy of Biological Sciences, Chennai, 2015 (FNABS). Professor Dr. M. Prakash is having around 26 years of teaching and research experience. He has guided 8 Ph.D. scholars and 22 PG Scholars. He Credentials include publications of 85 referred research papers, seven books published by National Publishers, and one book chapter published in SESAME by globally reputed CRC Press. He has Organized 6 National Seminars and completed five research projects. He has earned the status of Department Research Support with Special Assistance Programme of University Grants Commission ( UGC-SAP-DRS) to the Department with financial assistance of Rs. 50 lakhs at Phase I (2009-2014) and Rs. 1.025 Crore at Phase II (2015-2020) level.
Dr. S. Murugan has 25 years experience in teaching Plant Breeding and Plant Biotechnology. His research has emphasized improved crop selection methods and marker assisted breeding for yellow mosaic virus resistance in mungbean and urdbean. His objectives are to provide industry with new traits for the development of improved cultivars, research information, and graduate students who can run field plant breeding Programs. He graduated from Tamil Nadu Agricultural Unversity in the year 1987 and went on to do his M.Sc. (Agriculture) in Genetics and Plant Breeding from the same University in 1989. He completed his Ph.D. in Agricultural Botany from Annamalai University in 1998. In his early carrier , he has worked on research projects in Genetics Division of Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi and Centre for Plant Molecular Biology , Tamil Nadu Agricultural University. Dr. S. Murugan teaches several courses at Annamalai University , including plant breeding , Cytogenetics and plant Biotechnology . Recently , he was invited to North Carolina State University, U.S.A. as Visiting Professor to work on watermelon. He is currently Heading the Department of Plant Breeding and genetics in Annamalai University and coordinating Department of Science and Technology sponsored PURSE program and serving as Deputy Coordinator in UGC Sponsored Special Assistance Programme of the Department. Dr. S. Murugan has published 42 journals articles and edited one book . He has guided 20 post graduate students and three Ph.D. students for their thesis research . He has organised several National seminars and workshops in the Department of Genetics and Plant Breeding.
Dr. C. Praveen Sampath Kumar is working as Assistant Professor in the Department of genetics and Plant Breeding , Faculty of Agriculture, Annamalai University since 2003. He has completed his UG, PG and Ph.D. from Annamalai University and his research specialization is heterosis breeding. He has guided seven post graduate students and has published 28 research articles in the National and International journals. He has published one book and written three book chapters. He has also presented papers in various national and international seminars, conferences and symposiums.
