Hyderabad: IIMR scientist bags prestigious award

Hyderabad: Dr A V Umakanth, a distinguished agricultural scientist with the Indian Institute of Millets Research (IIMR) of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) has been awarded the Annual Seed Scientist Award by the Seedsmen Association here on Monday.

The award is presented recognising his pioneering contributions in the area of Sorghum crop breeding. He has made enormous contributions in genetic enhancement of different types of the grain benefiting the farming community immensely and in particular the seed industry. He has also developed the country's first-ever highly digestible brown midrib Sorghum variety CSV 43 BMR (Jaicar Nutrigraze) with low lignin content. This type of forage Sorghum will increase milk and meat production in ruminants. He has pioneered the work on introgression of brown midrib genes into elite Sorghum cultivars for the development of low lignin feed stocks suitable for second-generation biofuel production. He is leading the country's research on sweet sorghum and high biomass Sorghum for biofuels as Principal Investigator under the All India Coordinated Research Project on Sorghum.

Dr Umakanth is a Fellow of leading scientific academies like Indian Society of Genetics and Plant Breeding and Telangana Academy of Sciences. He has more than 125 research articles in his publication basket. He has also guided several M Sc and Ph D scholars and is a reviewer for various international and national journals.