Study was led by Prof K C Bansal, Former Director, ICAR-NBPGR
Landmark research study led by Prof K C Bansal, Former Director, ICAR-NBPGR has been published in the world renowned journal, ’Crop Science’, published by the Crop Science Society of America, USA. It has been also featured on the Cover Page of the journal. The study involved scientists from the ICAR-NBPGR and wheat researchers across the country and it was completed at the national level at different hotspots from resistance to diseases and heat stress and identified promising lines.
The national wheat improvement programme in the country has contributed significantly towards achieving the food security since the advent of the green revolution in the 1960s. However, there has always been a need for sustainable wheat production in this era of climate change by developing high yielding thermo-tolerant varieties with durable disease resistance and with the capacity to produce more with less of water and fertilizers. To address these challenges, it was always desired to evaluate all the lines of wheat germplasm conserved in the National Gene Bank at ICAR-NBPGR, New Delhi for identifying promising lines for use by breeders and researchers using the modern genomics tools. However, this was a gigantic task and never attempted before involving all (about 22,000) wheat accessions conserved in the Genebank.
