Punjab’s Agri Scientist conferred Prestigious National Level Award

Kapurthala, July 20 (Punjab Post Bureau) – Internationally renowned and celebrated agriculture scientist, Dr Gurinderjit Randhawa, working as Head, Department of Genomic Resources, National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources, ICAR New Delhi has been conferred a prestigious national award ‘Punjabrao Deshmukh National Outstanding Woman Scientist Award’ by Indian Council of Agriculture Research.

                Eldest among four sisters, this doaba girl was born and brought up at Kapurthala had studied at local Government Girls School and later she earned MSc from Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, M Phil from PU Chandigarh and PhD from UK in Molecular Genetics as a Commonwealth Fellow.

                 Dr. Randhawa has more than 35 years of distinguished and illustrious service as an Agriculture Scientist and published more than 80 research publications in high impact factor journals, seven books, 14 book chapter and more than 100 invited lectures in international and national fora to her credit. Apart from this, she has been granted three Patents by the government of India.

        She has developed cost effective and robust GM Detection Technologies such as GMO Screening matrix, visual and real-time PCR based essays, DNA based diagnostics for more than 15 crop plants and has transferred the technologies to the stakeholders enabling their commercialization and widespread adoption, -also established an operational network of GMO detection labs at national level. Apart from attending 32 international conferences, she was invited as an expert by FAO, UNIDO, European Commission etc and visited 17 different countries.

            This national Award has been bestowed upon Dr. Randhawa especially for her farsighted and strategic research efforts that have steadily built upgraded, harmonised and globally positioned national capacity in the area of Diagnostics of Genetically Modified Crops and development of genomic resources.

              Her contribution played an utmost role in the modern agriculture research which would be helpful to augment farmer’s livelihood and sustainability under rapid changing unprecedented scenario.