Suprasanna Penna

Bhabha Atomic Research Centre | BARC · Nuclear Agriculture & Bio Technology Division

Sesuvium portulacastrum is a facultative halophyte capable of thriving in a saline environment. Despite molecular studies conducted to unravel its salt adaptation mechanism, there is a paucity of information on the role of salt-responsive orthologs and microRNAs (miRNAs) in this halophyte. Here, we searched the orthology to identify salt-responsive...

Plant breeding aimed at crop improvement is dependent upon the genetic variability in the available genetic resources. This is essentially required as the current scenario of food security is threatened by several agricultural, climatic, and population issues which necessitate an increased food production channel. Often plant breeders attempt to in...

Nutritional security has become the prime concern for world agriculture through improving the nutritional quality of crop plants and fostering nutri-rich crops. Malnutrition in the developing countries and increased occurrence of several health problems are now the major global challenges. Cowpea is a prime pulse legume grown predominantly in the t...

Nutritional insecurity has become a major concern for the ever growing world population. Millets are small-seeded cereal crops which are underutilized and neglected but possess abundant micronutrients and minerals. Millets are predominantly cultivated in Asia and Africa, and are an excellent alternative to major staple foods because of minimal wate...

Microalgae are a natural source of lipids, carotenoids, and other value-added compounds. The combination of nutrients and their precise ratio have a significant impact on the productivity of microalgae-mediated compounds. The biomass, lipid, chlorophyll, and carotenoid production of three microalgae species, namely, Monoraphidium sp., Chlorella sor...

Citrus, belonging to the Rutaceae family, is a commercial fruit worldwide, and it is mainly recognized for its nutritional, anti-oxidant, and significant medicinal properties. Citruses are a group of multifaceted fruit crops with a rich traditional knowledge, deeply rooted in ethnic culture, and the fruits have been considered to be health-protecti...

Plant mutation breeding has become a major tool for the improvement of crop plants. Mutation breeding of crop plants is achieved by using physical and/or chemical mutagens in plants propagated via vegetative and sexual modes of propagation. Optimized protocols for the isolation of mutants, their screening and handling of mutant population are now f...

Climate change has an impact on global agricultural productivity. Increased food demand and significant reduction in crop yields are projected to worsen as a result of global warming. This scenario has prompted plant scientists to produce climate change resilient crops that can endure a wide range of conditions, including drought, heat, cold, salt,...

Induced mutation technology is a powerful means to introduce novel genetic variability for use in crop improvement. Induced mutants have been developed in several crop plants and economic use of the mutant varieties has demonstrated their potential across the globe. Sugarcane is an important cash crop cultivated primarily for its distinctive sucros...

Crop plants are exposed to a multitude of biotic and abiotic factors, which necessitates improving tolerance/resistance in plant germplasm using conventional, mutagenesis and biotechnological approaches. Several induced mutants have been improved for tolerance/resistance with other desirable characteristics and mutant varieties have been released f...

Globally, sustainable agriculture and food production systems face unprecedented challenges from population expanse, declining land, and water resources besides climate change. Climate change-driven factors like variation in temperature and precipitation patterns, the spread of drought and salinity on farmlands, increasing soil and water pollution,...

Abiotic stresses including drought and salinity have become frontier areas in agricultural research, particularly due to their damaging potential to threaten global food security in near future. Constantly increasing soil salinity has severely damaged the global production of staple food crops. The ever-increasing world population is critically str...

Natural and anthropogenic causes are significant sources of metals in the ecosystem; hence, heavy metal (HM) accumulation has become a primary environmental concern. HM contamination poses a serious threat to plants. A major focus of global research has been to develop cost-effective and proficient phytoremediation technologies to rehabilitate HM-c...

Fruit species contribute to nutritional and health security by providing micronutrients, antioxidants, and bioactive phytoconstituents, and hence fruit-based products are becoming functional foods presently and for the future. Although conventional breeding methods have yielded improved varieties having fruit quality, aroma, antioxidants, yield, an...

An indigenous reddish-brown landrace rice of the indica variety known as Hassawi rice (Oryza sativa L.) is cultivated in Saudi Arabia. This rice variety produces favourable metabolic profiles and possesses medicinal properties associated with nutritive and non-nutritive bioactive components. The health benefits of consuming Hassawi rice should be e...

Citrus plants have a secure and important place in human health. Citrus is not only significant for its delicious fruits but also because of certain medicinal and pharmacological properties. The presence of secondary metabolites like flavonoids, limonoids, alkaloids, phenolics and coumarins has dramatically increased its efficacy in treating bacter...

Sustainable management of plant diseases has become crucial in the context of climate change and food security. In this regard, several plant disease control methods are in use, however the RNA silencing or RNA interference (RNAi) technology is a promising tool for molecular breeding aimed at crop improvement that is efficacious, environmentally sa...

Potassium (K+) is indispensable for the regulation of a plethora of functions like plant metabolism, growth, development, and abiotic stress responses. K+ is associated with protein synthesis and entangled in the activation of scores of enzymes, stomatal regulation, and photosynthesis. It has multiple transporters and channels that assist in the up...

Drought restricts plant growth and productivity. Silicon has beneficial effects on imparting drought tolerance in plants. Present work was intended to evaluate the effect of Si on polyethylene glycol-6000 (PEG) induced osmotic stress in local landraces of finger millet. The seeds of stress-tolerant and stress-sensitive landraces of finger millet we...

Drought restricts plant growth and productivity. Silicon has beneficial effects on imparting drought tolerance in plants. Present work was intended to evaluate the effect of Si on polyethylene glycol-6000 (PEG) induced osmotic stress in local landraces of finger millet. The seeds of stress-tolerant and stress-sensitive landraces of finger millet we...

In vitro mutagenesis offers a feasible approach for developing new orchid cultivars through genetic manipulation. In the present study, protocorm-like bodies (PLBs) were exposed to gamma rays (10, 20, 40, 60, 80 Gy) to study in vitro growth responses and induction of mutants in Dendrobium ‘Emma White’. Both proliferation and regeneration of PLBs de...

Improvement of crop plants relies on the availability of plant genetic variation. There are several approaches for enhancing genetic variability and for breeding better genotypes to achieve high productivity to meet the demands of food security. India is an agrarian country, whose economic development is vastly dependent on sustained growth and ach...

Background:Chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.), a major nutritional source cultivated worldwide, is vulnerable to several abiotic and biotic stresses, including different types of soil-borne pathogens like Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. ciceri, which causes root rot disease and severely affects productivity.Methods and resultsIn this study, putative transgeni...

Cesium (Cs) is a soil contaminant and toxic to the ecosystem, especially the plant species. In this study, we have assessed the potential of a halophyte Sesuvium portulacastrum for its Cs tolerance and accumulation. Thirty days old S. portulacastrum plants were subjected to different concentrations of Cs (0, 5, 10, 25, 50, and 150 mg·L⁻¹ Cs) using...

Microorganisms dwell in diverse plant niches as non-axenic biotic components that are beneficial as well pathogenic for the host. They improve nutrients-uptake, stress tolerance, phytohormone synthesis, and strengthening the defense system through phyllosphere, rhizosphere, and endosphere. The negative consequences of the microbial communities are...

Systematic genome-wide analysis of Sorghum bicolor revealed the identification of a total of 48 homologous genes comprising 21 proline-rich proteins (PRPs) and 27 hybrid proline-rich proteins (HyPRPs). Comprehensive scrutiny of these gene homologs was conducted for gene structure, phylogenetic investigations, chromosome mapping, and subcellular loc...

Biofortifcation of staple food crops is an economical and practical way to mitigate micronutrient malnutrition as it predisposes humans to diferent health maladies. Despite the availability of various methods for biofortifcation, the biofortifed crops, especially millets, could ofer a great scope. Foxtail millet has adequate content of minerals, n...

Static magnetic field (SMF) as a priming method (magnetopriming) is used to invigorate plant growth and development culminating in improved productivity. In vitro shoot buds of Curcuma longa were exposed to a static magnetic field of 200 mT intensity for different periods, from 20 to 120 min. Various growth parameters such as fresh weight, shoot le...

The Nuclear Factor-Y (NF-Y) family of transcription factors is ubiquitous, heterotrimeric complex which regulates plant growth, development, and stress responses. As compared to animals and fungi, the number of NF-Y subunits has significantly expanded in higher plants. NF-Ys display differential stress-responsive gene expression in various tissues...

Ensuring the food and nutritional security for the growing population of our country requires enhance-ment of food production and storage using advanced and affordable technologies. There is a need to develop new crop varieties having desirable traits such as higher yield, better disease/pest tolerance and resistance to abiotic stress. The developm...

The Dendrobium hybrid cultivar ‘Emma White’ is an ornamental, successfully commercialised orchid. We used a gamma ray-induced early flowering mutant and the Illumina HiSeqX10 sequencing platform to generate the first draft de novo whole genome sequence and assembly. The draft sequence was 678,650,699 bp in length, comprising 447,500 contigs with an...

Large-scale production of natural plant products has become a necessity for a wide range of applications in human health and industry. In recent years, yeast has become a potential biotechnological and bioengineering platform for the production of industrially relevant biochemicals, pharmaceuticals, and biofuels which are often not easy to produce...

Context: Food security, integral to the UN sustainable development goals, has become a global priority. Only a handful of cultivated species meet 80% of dietary intake, and hence, in future, it may be inadequate to depend only on these crops. Aims: Wild germplasm is endowed with desirable traits of relevance to food, health and climate resilience a...

Sesuvium portulacastrum (L.) is a facultative halophyte that grows in subtropical coastal sides of the eastern and western regions of India. In the present study, the activation of antioxidant machinery was observed at 8 and 24 h after 250 mM NaCl stress treatment. Further, GC–MS/MS based metabolomics was performed, independently in root (NR8 and N...

Chickpea ( Cicer arietinum L.) is a major nutritional source cultivated worldwide. Chickpea is vulnerable to several abiotic and biotic stresses, including different types of soil-borne pathogens like Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. ciceri , which causes root rot disease and severely affects productivity. The putative transgenic plants were obtained with...

Dendrobium hybrid cultivar ‘Emma White’ is an ornamental orchid with high commercial demand. We have used gamma-ray induced ‘early flowering mutant’ to generate draft genome sequences with total length (bp) with 678,650,699 and contigs at 447,500 with N50 at 1,423 using the Illumina HiSeqX10 sequencing platform. Here, we report first de novo whole...

Genetic transformation involving the manipulation of the plant’s cellular DNA through recombinant DNA techniques is an effective method for crop improvement. Plant cellular genome could be modified genetically through different biological, physical, and chemical approaches and the transformation process is complemented by in vitro plant tissue cult...

Natural food products have the potential to replace synthetic products for nutrition and other heath beneficial properties. Banana is an important fruit crop with high nutritional value, and is an ideal, low cost food resource in the developing countries. However high wastage due to less consumption in the local markets and excess production has be...

β-Glucan is an eco-friendly, biodegradable, and economical biopolymer with important roles for acquiring adaptations to mitigate climate change in crop plants. β-Glucan plays a crucial role in the activation of functional plant innate immune system by triggering the downward signaling cascade/s, resulting in the accumulation of different pathogenes...

Banana is an important fruit crop in the tropics and subtropics; however, limited information on biomarkers and signature volatiles is available for selecting commercial cultivars. Clonal fidelity is a major contributor to banana yield and aroma; however, there are no useful biomarkers available to validate clonal fidelity. In this study, we perfor...

In this study, we developed a reliable and efficient Agrobacterium-mediated genetic transformation system by applying sonication and vacuum infiltration to six chickpea cultivars (ICCV2, ICCV10, ICCV92944, ICCV37, JAKI9218, and JG11) using embryo axis explants. Wounded explants were precultured for 3 days in shoot induction medium (SIM) before soni...

Brassica species present maximum diversity and play an important role in agri and horticulture sectors. Brassica transcriptome landscape has facilitated the identification of agronomically important genes relevant for biotic and abiotic stress tolerance and other traits. Genomes of five important Brassica family members including B. rapa, B. olerac...

Arsenic (As) and cadmium (Cd), two major carcinogenic heavy metals, enters into human food chain by the consumption of rice or rice-based food products. Both As and Cd disturb plant-nutrient homeostasis and hence, reduces plant growth and crop productivity. In the present study, As/Cd modulated responses were studied in non-basmati (IR-64) and basm...

Purpose Sugarcane is an important cash crop and is affected by soil salinity. CoM 0265, a moderately salt-tolerant variety grown in the Maharashtra region (India), has low sugar content. The present study was aimed to employ gamma ray induced in vitro mutagenesis with repeated and step-wise selection in sugarcane for the isolation and physio-bioche...

Large scale sugarcane micropropagation techniques ensure production of millions of plantlets to different agricultural sectors. However, several abiotic and biotic factors affect the micro plants, during the micropropagation process viz. microbial contamination in vitro, browning of media, hyperhydricity, poor light efficacy, insufficient gaseous e...

Climate change has severe impact on the incidence of erratic, extreme weather events leading to substantial effects on the world's ecosystems. Efforts are therefore required for enhancing crop resilience and adaptation to climate change for sustainable production, food and nutrition security. Multiple adaptation strategies are advocated for climate...

Cereals are important crops and are exposed to various types of environmental stresses that affect the overall growth and yield. Among the various abiotic stresses, salt stress is a major environmental factor that influences the genetic, physiological, and biochemical responses of cereal crops. Epigenetic regulation which includes DNA methylation,...

With the continuing climate change–driven environmental impact, horticulture sector is facing the pressure of achieving sustainable yield and quality of produce in several horticultural plants. Conventional and biotechnological tools including mutagenesis and molecular markers have contributed to improvement of useful traits such as new plant type,...

Salt stress is one of the most severe environmental stresses limiting the productivity of crops. The salt sensitivity of the rice, poses a major constraint on sustainable rice production and food security worldwide. Tolerance to salinity stress is crop growth stage, genotype and organ specific. However, there is a lack of comprehensive information...

Chitosan (CSN) and its derivatives are being exploited for their potential role in agriculture in mitigating environmental stress factors. The present study was aimed to enhance the synthesis of chitosan (CSN)-based silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) using γ-irradiated chitosan (IR-CSN) and to study the antimicrobial activity of IR-CSN–Ag NPs. The chito...

Amid mounting global human population, particularly in the develop�ing world, climate change continues to challenge food security and crop cultivation. Hence, mitigation strategies are needed to sustain and invigorate the crop resources needed for agriculture. Within the broad purview and compliance of sustainable development goals (SDG), it is als...

Thiourea (TU) is a chemo-priming agent and non-physiological reactive oxygen species (ROS) scavenger whose application has been found to reduce As accumulation in rice grains along with improved growth and yield. The present field study explored TU-mediated mechanistic changes in silicon (Si) assimilation in root/shoot, biochemical and molecular me...

Calcium (Ca²⁺) is widely recognized as a key second messenger in mediating various plant adaptive responses. Here we show that calcineurin B-like interacting protein kinase CIPK9 along with its interacting partner VDAC3 identified in the present study are involved in mediating plant responses to methyl viologen (MV). CIPK9 physically interacts with...

Global projections on the climate change and the dynamic environmental perturbations indicate severe impacts on food security in general, and crop yield, vigor and the quality of produce in particular. Sessile plants respond to environmental challenges such as salt, drought, temperature, heavy metals at transcriptional and/or post-transcriptional l...

Food security relies on plant productivity and plant's resilience to climate change driven environmental stresses. Plants employ diverse adaptive mechanisms of stress-signalling pathways, antioxidant defense, osmotic adjustment, nutrient homeostasis, phytohormones. Over the last few decades, silicon has emerged as a beneficial element for enhancing...

Climate-change-mediated increase in temperature extremes has become a threat to plant productivity. Heat stress-induced changes in growth pattern, sensitivity to pests, plant phonologies, flowering, shrinkage of maturity period, grain filling, and increased senescence result in significant yield losses. Heat stress triggers multitude of cellular, p...

Rice is a major cereal crop which is negatively impacted by soil-salinity, both in terms of plant growth as well as productivity. Salinity tolerant rice varieties have been developed using conventional breeding approaches, however there has been limited success which is primarily due to the complexity of the trait, low yield, variable salt stress r...

The present study evaluated arsenic (As) remediation capacity of Vetiveria. zizanoides plants from artificially contaminated soil (0, 50, 100, 250, 500, 1000 mg kg⁻¹) after various durations ie. 30, 60 and 90 d. Plants were found effective, maximum As removal being 71% after 90 d when grown in 50 mg kg⁻¹ As. Plant growth was not affected at lower A...

Purpose: This study was carried out to assess the effect of irradiated chitosan as an elicitor on the biochemical traits associated with resistance to purple blotch disease in onion . Materials and Methods Chitosan was electron beam irradiated at 100 kGy dose to obtain low molecular weight chitosan. Irradiated chitosan at 20 and 40 ppm concentrati...

Arsenic contamination of the environment is a serious problem threatening the health of millions of people exposed to arsenic (As) via drinking water and crops grown in contaminated areas. The remediation of As-contaminated soil and water bodies needs to be sustainable, low-cost and feasible to apply in the most affected low-to-middle income countr...

Flowers are used for all occasions worldwide and can be compared with ‘fashion designing’. Consumers are always looking preferably novel flowers traits, e.g., fragrance, different flower colour and shape, early flowering, less water consumption, long shelf-life. The worldwide floricultural industry is worth over 50 billion Euros and can serve as a...

Foxtail millet (Setaria italica L.) is nutri-cereal crop having it is rich in β-carotene, vitamin B-complex and micronutrients like minerals. In the present research, we have studied biochemical properties and molecular profiling to identify the core set of foxtail millet (Setaria italic L.) accessions for high Iron (Fe) and Zinc (Zn) content. Tota...

Metal contamination of the environment is a widespread problem threatening sustainable and safe crop production. Physio-biochemical and molecular mechanisms of plant responses to metal exposure have been studied to establish the best possible agronomical or biotechnological methods to tackle metal contamination. Metal stress tolerance is regulated...