Meet ICAR Director General Trilochan Mohapatra

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Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) Director General Dr. Trilochan Mohapatra, is known for his constant support to farmers, where, time and again, he has batted for increasing Minimum Support Price (MSP) for them.

Here are 13 facts you should know about him:

1. Dr. Trilochan Mohapatra was born on April 20, 1962 at Kharibil village in Odisha‘s Cuttack district.

2. He went to Laxmi Narayan High School at Eranch and completed his pre-university studies at Ravenshaw College.

3. Dr. Trilochan Mohapatra got his BSc degree in agriculture and MSc degree in genetics from Orissa University of Agriculture and Technology(OUAT). He even secured his PhD from the institution in 1992.

4. He joined the National Research Centre on Plant Biotechnology (NRCPB) as a senior scientist in 1992. His area of operation was advanced research in the fields of molecular biology and biotechnology in crop plants.

5. Dr. Trilochan Mohapatra was promoted as a principal scientist of NRCPB in 2005 and he continued to work there till 2012.

6. During 2003-2004, he attended an advanced training course in rice genome sequencing at the Arizona Genomics Institute of the University of Arizona.

7. He became the director of Central Rice Research Institute and vice-chancellor of the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) in 2012. He was appointed the director of IARI in 2015-16.

8. Dr. Mohapatra joined the Department of Agricultural Research and Education (DARE) as its secretary on Feb 22, 2016.

9. Simultaneously, he was appointed as the director general of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), where he is in charge of 101 ICAR institutes and 71 agricultural universities across India.

10. His research interest is mainly in molecular genetics and genomics.

11. He is credited for bacterial sequencing of rice and tomato, as well as for developing a high-yielding, bacterial leaf blight resistant basmati rice.

12. Some of his research projects included molecular mapping of genome and tagging of gene in mustard, molecular mapping and gene isolation in basmati rice hybrid, marker-assisted selection for powdery mildew resistance in pea, molecular marker analysis of sugarcane, identification of pearl millet hybrids, sex differentiation of kiwi fruit employing Random Amplification of Polymorphic DNA technique and evaluation of genetic diversity of jute.

13. Among many awards that he received, one was conferred to him by Government of India’s Department of Biotechnology – National Bioscience Award for Career Development – in 2003. It is one of the highest Indian science awards.

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