Dr Kuldeep Singh is an experienced molecular biologist with more than 30 years of experience. Currently, working as Head, Genebank at ICRISAT Hyderabad since September 1, 2021. As the Head of Genebank, his responsibilities include efficient conservation of germplasm both at Headquarter in India and Regional genebanks in Africa, by meeting the international genebank standards and policies and making them available to users globally. Dr Singh mainly focuses on planning and conducting germplasm research to improve the efficiency of conservation and use of the collection.
Before this, Dr Singh worked as Director at ICAR-National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources, New Delhi from August 2016 to August 2021. At NBPGR, his major emphasis was on the identification and collection of germplasm based on gap analysis, especially of the crop wild relatives; streamlining of national and international exchange of germplasm; large-scale characterization and utilization of germplasm, high throughput genomics; trait discovery; gene mapping and in-situ conservation of crop wild relatives; and DNA fingerprinting of crop varieties. For this, Dr Singh has mobilized funding to the tune of more than 2800 million INR. Dr Singh is a member of more than 20 national and international scientific committees of several institutes, including Asia chair for the bureau of the international treaty for plant genetic resources for food and agriculture (ITPGRFA), Rome and co-chair for GLIS.
Dr Singh received his MSc and PhD degrees in Plant Breeding from Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) Ludhiana and is the recipient of the Sardar Iqbal Singh Gold Medal. Dr Singh has taught 13 different courses in Genetics, Plant Breeding and Molecular Genetics and Genomics at PAU, Ludhiana for undergraduate and postgraduate students. Dr Singh established three teaching programmes leading to the award of BSc. MSc. and PhD. degrees in Biotechnology. Dr Singh guided 14 MSc and 14 PhD students and four of them were recipients of Monsanto Beachel - Borlaug International Scholarships.
Dr Singh is the recipient of The Borlaug Global Rust Initiative Gene Stewardship Award – 2018 and SciGenom Research Foundation Excellence in Science award – 2018, and Headmaster Niranjan Singh Memorial Award - 2019.
Expertise in: Plant breeding, Molecular geneticists, Plant Genetic Resources, Mutation breeding