PLANT STRESS BIOLOGY LAB

My research is focused to understand the physiological, molecular and metabolic responses in crop plants under diverse stress conditions. Today, in the era of climate change, global agricultural productivity is largely affected due to several factors such as recurrent emergence of drought, floods, environmental contaminants such as heavy metals, metalloids, microplastics, soil acidity, salinity, etc. Such factors considerably affect agricultural yield and poses a serious threat to global food security and nutrition. Thus, there is an unrelenting need to dissect out diverse components concerning stress perception, adaptation and tolerance. Besides this, mitigation strategies to combat stresses are also needed to improve plant performance. Currently my research is focused on:

1. Nutrient management and seed priming strategy for heavy metal and metalloid stress mitigation in plants

2. Management of acidic soil stress rice and tea agro-ecosystem

3. Biochar – nano and biochar – microbial composites for improving plant performance under stress

4. Microplastics: uptake, distribution and impact on crop plants

1. Transcriptomics and Metabolomics for abiotic stress resilience in crop plants