Indore (Madhya Pradesh): The Indian Institute of Soybean Research, a premier oilseed institute devoted for coordinating soybean research and development activities, conducted a brainstorming session on ‘Strategies for developing for disease resistance in soybean’ in order to manage the problems of decreasing soybean yield caused by fungal and viral diseases.
The speakers included renowned scientists from the United States, Japan and India. The programme was chaired by deputy director general (Crop Science), ICAR, New Delhi, Dr TR Sharma, co-chaired by Dr. Sanjeev Gupta, assistant director general (Oilseeds & Pulses), ICAR, New Delhi.
The chief guest of the programme was Dr. SP Tiwari, former VC, SKRAU Bikaner & former DDG (Education and Crop Science), ICAR, New Delhi and the convener of the programme was Dr K.H. Singh, Director, ICAR-IISR, Indore. Prof Roger Innes, distinguished professor, Department of Biology, Indiana University, Bloomington, USA talked about conferring resistance to major diseases of soybean using “Decoy Engineering”.
According to him, such novel transgenic technology can help in enhancing disease resistance in soybean. Dr Anne E Dorrance, professor emeritus, Department of Plant Pathology, The Ohio State University, CFAES, Wooster, Ohio, USA delivered a lecture on building a better soybean: Lessons from Phytophthora sojae, who deliberated on soybean diseases like soybean rust, sclerotinia stem rot, diaporthe stem canker and soybean seeding damping off.
In her talk, she emphasised extensively on the research going on pathotype characterisation and resistance breeding for Phytophthora disease. Prof K Maredia, director (International Program-Agriculture & Natural Resources), Michigan State University, USA discussed on International Collaboration in Agriculture & Natural Resources Research showed willingness for future research collaboration and capacity building of Indian soybean scientists at Michigan State University.
Dr. Sara Thomas-Sharma, assistant professor, Department of Plant Pathology & Crop Physiology, Louisiana State University, USA addressed epidemiological knowledge gaps to improve the integrated management of soybean diseases.
According to Dr Naoki, Yamanaka Biological Resources and Post-Harvest Division, JIRCAS, Tsukuba, Japan, race-specific breeding for rust resistance can be effective and economical to solve the problem of Asian soybean rust. Dr V.K. Baranwal, National Professor, Division of Plant Pathology, IARI, New Delhi talked about detection and diagnosis of various soybean viral diseases of India and their disease management strategies.
