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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: Das, Suparna × End date: 2019 × Start date: 2019 × Type: Thesis ×
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    ThesisItemOpen Access
    Molecular characterization for fragrance of aromatic rice varieties using candidate gene markers
    (DRPCAU, Pusa, Samastipur, 2019) Das, Suparna; Kumar, Mithilesh
    A study was conducted to examine the genetic diversity in eighteen entries from aromatic rice varieties in order to analyze the nature and extent of genetic variation in relation to fragrance amongst rice varieties using polymorphic and informative primers. To synthesize and utilize fragrance related candidate genes based primers for molecular characterization of some aromatic rice varieties. The materials were grown in petri plates for extraction of genomic DNA from the young seedlings and then targeted amplification of the genomic DNA using a panel of twenty two candidate gene based primer pairs covering two genes namely BADH1 and BADH2. All molecular studies were conducted in the Molecular Biology Laboratory at Pusa. Biochemical analysis for evolution of aroma in different rice varieties used in the study was based on inhalation by different persons and the eighteen genotypes under evaluation were classified into low scented, medium scented and highly scented categories. Using microsatellite identification tool gramene/org/db/markers/ssrtool was used to find out the microsatellite (SSR) sequences within the amplicon screening region of the candidate genes BADH1 and BADH2. Microsatellites within the exons and introns in the gene BADH1 and BADH2 were identified. The statistical methods and parameters used for deriving inference were polymorphism information content, similarity coefficient and numerical taxonomic analysis of divergence. The amplification was successfully achieved with all the candidate gene based primers pairs used in the present study. Appearance of bands at different positions on the gel revealed differential migration of amplified products due to differences in overall size of the products generated from targeted amplification of specific region of genome. The polymorphism among the varieties was recognized on the basis of presence or absence of bands, in addition to variation in respect of number and position of bands. Altogether 66 allelic variants were detected among the eighteen rice entries. The number of alleles per locus ranged from two in the cases of BADH1A7, BADH1A12, BADH1A14, BADH2A7 and BADH2A11 to five in the case of BADH1A3 and BADH1A8. The amplification of genomic DNA using twenty two primer pairs, namely, BADH1A3, BADH1A6, BADH1A7, BADH1A8, BADH1A9, BADH1A10, BADH1A11, BADH1A12, BADH1A13, BADH1A14, BADH1A15, BADH2A3, BADH2A6, BADH2A7, BADH2A8, BADH2A9, BADH2A10, BADH2A11, BADH2A12, BADH2A13, BADH2A14 and BADH2A15 exhibited different levels of polymorphism amongst the eighteen aromatic rice genotypes under consideration in the present study, revealing the existence of differences in molecular size of the candidate genes specific genomic regions flanked by the primer pairs. A total of 38 shared and 28 unique allelic variants were generated in the form of amplified products by polymerase chain reaction using twenty two primer pairs. The number of shared alleles per locus ranged from one in the case of BADH1A7, BADH1A12, BADH1A14, BADH2A3, BADH2A7, BADH2A8 and BADH2A11. Two in the case of BADH1A3, BADH1A6, BADH1A9, BADH1A10, BADH1A11, BADH1A13, BADH1A15, BADH2A6, BADH2A9, BADH2A10, BADH2A12, BADH2A13, BADH2A14 and BADH2A15. Three in the case of BADH1A8. Similarly, the number of unique alleles per locus ranged from one in the case of BADH1A6, BADH1A7, BADH1A9, BADH1A10, BADH1A12, BADH1A13, BADH1A14, BADH1A15, BADH2A6, BADH2A7, BADH2A9, BADH2A10, BADH2A11, BADH2A12, BADH2A13, BADH2A14 and BADH2A15 , two in BADH1A8, BADH1A11, BADH2A3 and BADH2A8, three in BADH1A3. The presence of null allele was inferred due to failure of amplification for a particular repeat locus specific to the unique flanking sequences. Out of twenty two primer pairs two primer pair locus associated with BADH1A3 and BADH2A12 exhibited null alleles ranging from one to five in the entries under evaluation. On the contrary, the remaining twenty primer pairs did not exhibit the presence of null allele(s) in any one of the entries under evaluation during the course of the present investigation.