Research partners in China keen to take on other crops

Research partners in China keen to take on other crops

Dr Varshney was felicitated by Dr Shubo and officials from SAAS and SPRI on winning the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award-2015, India’s highest science and technology award.

Dr Varshney was felicitated by Dr Shubo and officials from SAAS and SPRI on winning the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award-2015, India’s highest science and technology award.

The Shandong Academy of Agricultural Sciences (SAAS) seeks to strengthen its collaboration with ICRISAT and is looking forward to support on other crops as well as capacity building. SAAS currently receives support from ICRISAT in peanut genomics and breeding.

Dr Wan Shubo, President, SAAS, made this statement at a meeting to discuss the ongoing collaborative research between ICRISAT, SAAS and Shandong Peanut Research Institute (SPRI).

Dr Rajeev Varshney, Research Program Director and Director, Centre of Excellence in Genomics (CEG), ICRISAT, who is international advisor for SPRI, attended the meeting.

Currently, SPRI-SAAS and ICRISAT are in the process of establishing a joint biotech laboratory at SPRI, Qingdao. Dr Varshney together with Dr Yanlin Shu from SPRI, Xuan Xian Liang from Oilcrops Research Institute of Guangdong Academy of Agricultural Sciences and Shuping Wang of Shofine Seeds Co. and other colleagues from China, USA and ICRISAT are engaged in sequencing the A genome of peanut.

“In the last two years we have witnessed tremendous progress in peanut research at SPRI and this is the result of collaboration with ICRISAT, said Dr Li Gui Zhu, Director General, SPRI.