Kajal Samantara

Institute of Technology, University of Tartu · Plant Signal Research Group

Erosion of genetic diversity due to excessive breeding applications is a major threat to crop species. Plants should be genetically diverse to cope with repercussions of changing climate. Of late, diversity made available through epigenetic changes now appearing to be a novel source for crop improvement. Epigenetics is a phenomenon that alters heri...

Introduction of modern tools and techniques into crop breeding and genetics are necessary to meet the growing demand for food and extreme environmental changes. Traditionally, breeding and genetic mapping of agronomically important traits rely on bi-parental and double haploid populations. However, these types of populations offer low allelic varia...

Cultivated modern maize (Zea mays L.) originated through the continuous process of domestication from its wild progenitors. Today, maize is considered as the most important cereal crop which is extensively cultivated in all parts of the world. Maize shows remarkable genotypic and phenotypic diversity which makes it an ideal model species for crop g...

Breeding crops in a conventional way demands considerable time, space, inputs for selection, and the subsequent crossing of desirable plants. The duration of the seed-to-seed cycle is one of the crucial bottlenecks in the progress of plant research and breeding. In this context, speed breeding (SB), relying mainly on photoperiod extension, temperat...

Key message Improving crop resistance against insect pests is crucial for ensuring future food security. Integrating genomics with modern breeding methods holds enormous potential in dissecting the genetic architecture of this complex trait and accelerating crop improvement. Abstract Insect resistance in crops has been a major research objective i...

Analysis of natural diversity in wild/cultivated plants can be used to understand the genetic basis for plant breeding programs. Recent advancements in DNA sequencing have expanded the possibilities for genetically altering essential features. There have been several recently disclosed statistical genetic methods for discovering the genes impacting...

Crop improvement programmes began with traditional breeding practices since the inception of agriculture. Farmers and plant breeders continue to use these strategies for crop improvement due to their broad application in modifying crop genetic compositions. Nonetheless, conventional breeding has significant downsides in regard to effort and time. C...

TILLING (Targeting Induced Local Lesions in Genomes) is a rapid, high-throughput, and economical non-transgenic tool of reverse genetics aimed to discover and map induced mutations. TILLING can be extended to any species that are convenient for mutagenesis. The efficiency, practicability, and effective approach permit TILLING as a potential weapon...

Since the discovery of totipotency in 1902, plant cell and tissue culture has been an integral part of plant biotechnology and crop improvement attempts. The initial academic interest with the developments of the various plant tissue culture techniques through the subsequent progress has led to further standardization of the techniques for applicat...

Genetic improvement of temperate fruit and nut crops through conventional breeding methods is not sufficient alone due to its extreme time-consuming, cost-intensive, and hard-to-handle approach. Again, few other constraints that are associated with these species, viz., their long juvenile period, high heterozygosity, sterility, presence of sexual i...

Gloriosa superba L. (family Colchicaceae or Lilliaceae) is a perennial tuberous climbing herb, extensively scattered in tropical parts of Asia and Africa. It is a magnificent flowering plant with a lot of splendor and conspicuous bright red and yellow blossoms. Phytochemical screening of ethanolic and aqueous extracts of the plant revealed the p...

Plants are considered an essential source of numerous therapeutic means for humans. These plant-derived medicines are utilized for various pharmaceutical products including different drug formulations. However, the large-scale production of these plants has become a challenge due to various factors such as susceptibility to diseases, pests, and poo...

Rice grain quality is the primary determinant of market acceptability. Since whole grain rice is mostly consumed as a staple meal, rice grain quality is quite complicated than that of other cereals. Globally, rice grain quality is composed of four major attributes: (i) milling quality; (ii) appearance quality; (iii) cooking and eating quality; and...

Climate change is affecting the agriculture production severely across the world and feeding ever growing population becoming more challenging task. Due to anthropogenic activities, there is accelerated rate of emission of greenhouse gases leading to rise in the global mean temperature (Allen et al., 2018). According to IPCC sixth annual report, gl...

Multiple stress factors, both abiotic and biotic, often confront plants developing in their natural environments. Although numerous kinds of research have focused on key impacts of individual stresses on plant systems, knowledge of how to adapt against combinatorial stress is still limited. Plants are known to defend themselves against both abiotic...

Globally, about 20% of calories (energy) come from wheat. In some countries, it is more than 70%. More than 2 billion people are at risk for zinc deficiency and even more, people are at risk of iron deficiency, nearly a quarter of all children underage group of 5 are physically and cognitively stunted, and lack of dietary zinc is a major contributi...

Legumes, being angiosperm’s third-largest family as well as the second major crop family, contributes beyond 33% of human dietary proteins. The advent of the global food crisis owing to major climatic concerns leads to nutritional deprivation, hunger and hidden hunger especially in developing and underdeveloped nations. Hence, in the wake of promot...

Abscisic acid (ABA) is a plant growth regulator known for its functions, especially in seed maturation, seed dormancy, adaptive responses to biotic and abiotic stresses, and leaf and bud abscission. ABA activity is governed by multiple regulatory pathways that control ABA biosynthesis, signal transduction, and transport. The transport of the ABA si...

In this experiment 55 linseed genotypes were evaluated to determine genetic diversity by Mahalanobis D2 statistics during rabi 2018-19 at the Department of Plant breeding and Genetics, Orissa University of Agriculture and Technology, Odisha India. It revealed that 55 genotypes were grouped into eleven clusters. Result envisaged that genotypes group...

Micronutrient malnutrition, commonly known as ‘hidden hunger’ mainly due to iron, zinc and pro-vitamin A deficiencies, has emerged as one of the major health problems worldwide. According to recent finding by WHO and FAO, around 3 billion people are at risk for zinc deficiency, 2 billion people are anaemic due to iron deficiency and about 150 milli...

The present investigation entitled “Altitudinal variation of woody vegetation in Tirthan valley of Great Himalayan National Park at Kullu, Himachal Pradesh” was carried out in three different elevation i.e. lower zone (1500-2000 m.), mid zone (2000-2500 m.) and upper zone (2500-3000 m.) of Tirthan valley at Great Himalayan National Park. In every e...