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Dr. Rajendra Prasad Central Agricultural University, Pusa

In the imperial Gazetteer of India 1878, Pusa was recorded as a government estate of about 1350 acres in Darbhanba. It was acquired by East India Company for running a stud farm to supply better breed of horses mainly for the army. Frequent incidence of glanders disease (swelling of glands), mostly affecting the valuable imported bloodstock made the civil veterinary department to shift the entire stock out of Pusa. A British tobacco concern Beg Sutherland & co. got the estate on lease but it also left in 1897 abandoning the government estate of Pusa. Lord Mayo, The Viceroy and Governor General, had been repeatedly trying to get through his proposal for setting up a directorate general of Agriculture that would take care of the soil and its productivity, formulate newer techniques of cultivation, improve the quality of seeds and livestock and also arrange for imparting agricultural education. The government of India had invited a British expert. Dr. J. A. Voelcker who had submitted as report on the development of Indian agriculture. As a follow-up action, three experts in different fields were appointed for the first time during 1885 to 1895 namely, agricultural chemist (Dr. J. W. Leafer), cryptogamic botanist (Dr. R. A. Butler) and entomologist (Dr. H. Maxwell Lefroy) with headquarters at Dehradun (U.P.) in the forest Research Institute complex. Surprisingly, until now Pusa, which was destined to become the centre of agricultural revolution in the country, was lying as before an abandoned government estate. In 1898. Lord Curzon took over as the viceroy. A widely traveled person and an administrator, he salvaged out the earlier proposal and got London’s approval for the appointment of the inspector General of Agriculture to which the first incumbent Mr. J. Mollison (Dy. Director of Agriculture, Bombay) joined in 1901 with headquarters at Nagpur The then government of Bengal had mooted in 1902 a proposal to the centre for setting up a model cattle farm for improving the dilapidated condition of the livestock at Pusa estate where plenty of land, water and feed would be available, and with Mr. Mollison’s support this was accepted in principle. Around Pusa, there were many British planters and also an indigo research centre Dalsing Sarai (near Pusa). Mr. Mollison’s visits to this mini British kingdom and his strong recommendations. In favour of Pusa as the most ideal place for the Bengal government project obviously caught the attention for the viceroy.

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Subject: Agricultural Biotechnology × Author: Chunletia, Rati Satish × End date: 2019 × Start date: 2018 ×
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    ThesisItemOpen Access
    Molecular profiling of some local edible mushrooms of Bihar
    (DRPCAU, Pusa, Samastipur, 2019) Chunletia, Rati Satish; Kumar, Mithilesh
    Altogether 18 strains of mushrooms belonging to 5 genera namely Agaricus, Calocybe, Lentinula, Pleurotus, Tricholoma were included in present investigation for morphological, biochemical and molecular characterization. These strains were obtained from Directorate of Mushroom Research, Solan and Mushroom Lab, RPCAU, Pusa. All the strains under study were morphologically distinguished at both crop and mycelium stage. Change in colony characters with change in media was observed. Radial growth measurement of mycelium for optimum growth conditions for all the strains were recorded with respect to different media, temperature and pH and best growth for Tricholoma strains was observed on PDA medium, 25°C of temperature and pH 9 while for Agaricus MEA medium, 25°C of temperature and pH 9 were more appropriate. PDA medium, 15°C temperature and pH 7 was suitable for Lentinula strains and WEA medium,15°C temperature and pH 9 for Pleurotus strains. Calocybe strains showed best growth on both PDA and WEA, at 25°C and pH 7. Mycelium study is important as extracellular secretions by mycelium facilitates growth of crop and bioremediation process thus, biochemical screening of enzymatic activities for all the strains was done through plate test for lipase, amylase, laccase and by oxidation discs for oxidase. Lipase showed positive results for all the strains whereas amylase showed restricted response. Among all the strains AB-14-01 showed maximum enzymatic activity. Ample diversity was expected and observed as these strains belong to different genera and species thus, during the assessment of molecular characterization by 19 SSR primer pairs, cross amplification was found to be low. These SSR primers were derived from three different genera namely Agaricus, Calocybe and Pleurotus which gave 103 allelic variants with 52 unique and 51 shared alleles and an average of 5 alleles per primer. The dendrogram based on UPGMA for diversity analysis divided the mushroom entries into a mono-genotypic group (V), a penta-genotypic group (II), two di-genotypic group (III) and (IV), two tetra-genotypic group (III) and (V) which showed complete correspondence with principal coordinate analysis. The primer pairs GB-PO-026, AbSSR42 and AbSSR54 were found to be highly informative for the purpose of molecular profiling of mushroom entries belonging to different genera, species, geographical area and ecology.