Plant Virus-Host Interaction: Molecular Approaches and Viral Evolution

Prof. (Dr.) R.K. Gaur earned his Ph.D. in 2005, and is now a Professor at the Department of Biotechnology, Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gorakhpur University, Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, India. His Ph.D. was on the molecular characterization of sugarcane viruses, i.e., mosaic, streak mosaic, and yellow luteovirus. He received a MASHAV fellowship of the Israeli government for his postdoctoral studies and joined The Volcani Center, Israel and Ben-Gurion University, Negev, Israel. In 2007 he received the Visiting Scientist Fellowship from the Swedish Institute, Sweden to work at Umea ̊ University, Umea ̊, Sweden. He received a postdoc fellowship from ICGEB, Italy in 2008. He has made significant contributions on sugarcane viruses and has pub lished 130 national/international papers, authored 17 edited books and presented about 50 papers at national and international conferences. He has been honored as a Fellow of Linnean Society, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology, a Fellow of the Society of Plant Research, a Fellow of the Society of Applied Biology (FSAB), and a Fellow of the International Society of Biotechnology (FISBT). He has received many other awards, including the Prof. B.M. Johri memorial Award, Society of Plant Research (SPR); Excellent Teaching Award by Astha Foundation, Meerut; UGC-Research Teacher Award; Young Scientist Award in 2012 in Biotechnology by the Society of Plant Research (SPR), Meerut; and Scientific and Applied Research Center Gold Medal Award in 2011 for outstanding contribution in the field of Biotechnology. He has visited several laborato ries in the United States, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Thailand, Sweden, and Italy. Currently, he is han dling many national and international grants and international collaborative projects on plant viruses and disease management

Dr. Sharma’s research focuses on Agriculture Biotechnology, specifically on the characterization of genes and SSRs for abiotic stresses (drought and heat) and understating the role of epigenetics, Gene silencing and small RNAs in for wheat improvement. He has been associated with several networking projects funded as Agri-Bioinformatics Promotion Program, ACIAR-DST, and DBT-BBSRC, ICAR Networking projects on AMMAS, Cabin and AMAAS schemes etc. He has published 90 peer reviewed papers, editor of six books published in CRC, Elsevier and Academic Press, and 20 book chapters. Dr Sharma has been associated with a recently released bread wheat variety DBW71 and three trait specific genetic and has been awarded with ICAR-Lal Bahadur Shastri Outstanding Young Scientist Award, NAAS- Young Scientist 2007 and ISCA- Pran Vohra Awards. Dr Sharma is Chief Editor of Journal of Cereal Research and editorial of several journals.