Subhradip Bhattacharjee

ICAR- Central Coastal Agricultural Research Institute · ITMU

As a former PhD scholar, currently working as a Junior Research Fellow on a DST-funded project, I am seeking information on travel grants. A few months ago, while I was still pursuing my PhD, I submitted an abstract to a prestigious conference scheduled for February in Belgium. My submission was accepted during my tenure as a student. However, I encountered issues while searching for travel grants. Typically, funding bodies like DST-SERB or CSIR require applications to be submitted at least four months in advance. I received confirmation of my abstract's acceptance in September, when I was still a student. In October, I submitted my thesis and subsequently joined the aforementioned project. In January, when I attempted to apply for funding through DST or SERB, I discovered that the application necessitates a signature from the head of the institution. Upon contacting the director for this signature, I was informed that my application could not be endorsed as I had completed my degree, despite being a student when the abstract was submitted. Attempts to apply as a Junior Research Fellow were also unsuccessful, as I was informed that I was ineligible since I am neither a student nor a permanent employee. I am eager to know if this is a standard policy across all institutions in India or specific to ICAR. Furthermore, I am interested in identifying any funding agencies that offer travel grants to independent researchers, where the signature of the head of the institute is not mandatory, and the Principal Investigator's (PI) endorsement is sufficient.

Although there are several research papers describing methods to estimate different organic phosphorus fractions, I did not found any comprehensive method to estimate different organic P fractions. If anybody has any protocol kindly share it.

Among hundreds of Linux distributions, what are the most suitable ones which can be used by a biological science researchers whose workflow is largely based on genomic data science and its analytics (Bioinformatics), scientific manuscript preparation, illustration etc.

While Linux has its own bits of share in other things of daily life including software development, internet security, server and data analytics; why does it lags behind in academics and research especially in biological sciences despite of having financial advantage?

As LaTeX is a fantastic tool for scientific documentation; there are plenty of TeX editors are around. Some of these editors are online and cloud based such as Overleaf while others are old style offline installation based. I am curious to know if both are equally good when it comes to writing very long documents like a Ph.D. thesis? If not; which type is better for thesis works involving several chapters as separate TeX document?

Next-generation gene sequencing is the current trend in nearly all aspects of biological sciences. Analysing these NGS generated large chunks of data require higher computational power without making the whole analysis process too much difficult for biologists. Modern and updated versions of a few programming languages used in genomic data science, such as python and R boost about their simple syntaxes and easier handling of large data and their systematic handling. The question is whether another popular language such as Perl is losing the game on this front?

With advancement of omics tools now we have multiple options to determine the community level interaction and changes in soil microbe. Among all these methods ; which is the most straight forward, competent and more insightful to for estimation of fungal community structure under manure amended soil?

Popular publication houses like Elsevier, Springer and Wiley have thousand of journals under their umbrella. They periodically start/acquire new journals. How we can know about newly launched/ acquired journals of a particular subject area?

In the case of nutrient management practices, what kind of changes can we expect in dry matter % as compared to the control where no nutrient was supplied. If we consider a known amount of fresh sample weight whether the dry matter % will increase or decrease in plants having sufficient nutrient supply as compared to the control?

Elaboration:

1. There are two plot conditions; the first one does not have an external nutrient supply hence facing nutritional deficiency ( control) and the second one has sufficient supply of nutrients (NM). All the other factors are kept same.

2. Now we have taken a known amount of fresh chopped sample (say 500 grams) for both the treatments and oven-dried it following the standard procedure.

3. What kind of outcome can we expect for dry matter percentage? whether the Drymatter% of control sample will be higher than the NM or vice-versa?

Generally what is the concentration of total protein of wheat grain if we carryout Bradford assay for protein estimation?

I need to estimate protein from wheat grain/flour sample using the Bradford method. What is the standard procedure of extraction and estimation of protein using the Bradford method?

The total nitrogen estimation from the plant sample is a very common analysis often performed by the students and researchers of plant science. However; there are many major and minor alterations of the most commonly used method of nitrogen estimation i.e, using Kjeldahl digestion and distillation assembly. For example; the acidic media (often 4% boric acid) which entraps the liberated ammonia; contains an indicator for facilitating titration. Some literature suggests using methyl red+ bromocressol green while some other suggests either methyl red+ methylene blue (Tashiros indicator) or congo red. Which is the most appropriate mixed indicator for this kind of acid-base titration? Again how much NaOH should be used to neutralize the H₂SO₄ within the Kjeldahl tube? Can anybody suggest a well explained and detailed procedure of analysis of total nitrogen which is accepted by the majority of the good journals? I have found ISO standard procedure of available nitrogen analysis from the soil sample however plant analysis procedure was enlisted there.

I am using KELPLUS ELITE-EX VA semi-automatic Kjeldahl distillation unit for nitrogen estimation. The salesman told me that unlike the older version; this version does not require making up the sample volume after digestion and we can directly attach the tube to distillation unit and entrap the liberated ammonia in boric acid (with mixed indicator) and than titrate it against standard acid (H₂SO₄ ). However, fitting titration value in the traditional formula is giving wrong underestimated result. What will be the correct formula for estimating nitrogen% using the above-mentioned device? I am using about 0.7 gram of sample, 30 ml of conc. H₂SO₄ along with digestion tablet for digestion of the sample. The temperature of the digestion unit reaches up to 400`C in final stages. After the completion of the digestion and cooling down of the sample, I am attaching the tube directly to the distillation unit. I have measured the amount of digested sample and found it is 20 ml. The distillation unit is drawing 40 ml of 40% NaOH to neutralize acid and steam digesting for about 9 minutes. To entrap the liberated ammonia, I am using 4% boric acid along with a mixed indicator of methyl red (7 ml mixed with 1000 ml of 4% boric acid) and Bromocressol green (12 ml mixed with 1000 ml of 4% boric acid). for the titration, I am using 0.1N H₂SO₄ . The titration value is coming as 2.57 for wheat grain and 1.6 for wheat straw. Now how to convert these value to N%?

I have an experiment in which I want to estimate the photosynthetic activity and carbon dioxide flux of wheat plant. However, in my institute does not have potable photosynthesis equipment. Is there any institute in Northern India from where I can hire this device on a payment basis. The device will be needed on a thirty days interval for six months. Is there any institutes which provide this facility?

While communicating a research paper to a journal we provide corresponding authors email id. The email id is often the institutional id of the author. However; sometimes a student a write a paper after graduating from a university and that time he might not have access to the institutional email id. Is there any difference of between institutional email id and regular email id? Does institutional email id influences journal editors perception toward the article?

As in Masters of Science in Agronomy in many places have only one year of research work, is it possible to convert it to a paper and publish it in an impact factored journal especially when the work is based on any micronutrient? Do journals accept a single year of research work or they ask for confirmatory data from second-year?

Is it possible to conduct an experiment without proper control where the effect of several doses of a particular nutrient on a particular crop will be evaluated? Is it possible to compare these doses with one another rather than comparing with a formal control using DMRT or turkey HSD? Again if we take two factors( two different nutrient sources and their respective level) is control is still needed as levels? For example if I take thee doses of nitrogen (100 kg N/ha, 150 kg N/ha and 200 kg N/ha) and three doses of potassium (50 kg k₂O/ ha 100 kg k₂O/ ha and 150kg k₂O/ ha) in FRBD design; is it necessary to add another level as the control in nitrogen where no nitrogen will be applied?