Genetics of Salt Tolerance in Plants: A Central Dogma Perspective and Strategies for Enhancement

Dr. Showkat Ahmad Ganie is a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow. He works as a Senior Research Officer at the University of Essex, United Kingdom. He is an early career researcher, and his long-term research interest has been to understand the regulation of abiotic stress (especially salt stress) responses in crops to increase their stress resistance, with the final aim to improve the crop productivity. Currently, as a part of the EU funded Horizon 2020 project, CAPITALISE, he is looking to improve plant photosynthesis. He completed his PhD at ICAR-NBPGR, New Delhi, India, studying the molecular genetic diversity in rice with respect to salt tolerance. He has worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, USA; where he studied the ways to enhance plant genetic transformation. He also worked as a Marie-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at Royal Holloway, University of London to investigate the role of memory in plant stress tolerance. Dr. Ganie has several awards that he won during his studies. He is currently member of the Editorial Board of some reputed journals, including Plant, Cell & Environment, BMC Plant Biology, and PLOS ONE.

Dr. Shabir Hussain Wani Assistant Professor (Senior Scale) cum Scientist, Genetics and Plant Breeding at Mountain Research Centre for Field Crops, Khudwani, Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology, Srinagar J&K, India. He received a Ph.D. degree in plant breeding and genetics on "transgenic rice for abiotic stress tolerance" from the Punjab Agricultural University Ludhiana, India. He then joined the Krishi Vigyan Kendra (Farm Science Centre) as program coordinator (i/c) at Senapati, Manipur, India. He teaches courses related to plant breeding, seed science and technology, and stress breeding and has published more than 200 papers/chapters in journals and books of international and national repute. He served as guest editor and reviews editor for journal Frontiers in Plant Science (2015-2018). He has also edited several books on current topics in crop improvement for abiotic stress tolerance published by Springer Nature and CRC press USA. His Ph.D. research fetched first prize in the North Zone Competition, at national level, in India during 2009. He also received Young Scientist Award (Agriculture) 2015 from Society for Plant Research, Meerut, India. He also served as visiting Scientist at Department of Plant Soil and Microbial Sciences, Michigan State University, USA under the UGC Raman Post-Doctoral Fellowship programme during 2016-17. He was elected as Fellow of Linnean Society of London 2017. Recently he was felicitated with Award for Excellence in Research 2020 from Novel Research Academy, Puducherry, India. Recently Dr. Wani was selected as member of Expert Working Group (EWG) Wheat Initiative for Adaptation of Wheat to Abiotic Stress (AWAS), Berlin, Germany during January 2021. He is also elected as Joint Secretary (Asia) for the Society for Plant Research, Vegetos (2021-2024). Currently, he is in charge of Wheat improvement programme at MRCFC Khudwani SKAUST Kashmir under the ICAR-All India Coordinated Improvement Project on Wheat and Barley.