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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Open Access
Molecular characterization in relation to seed vigour related traits in rice
(DRPCAU, PUSA, 2021) KUMAR, PRATIK; SHARMA, V. K.
Seed vigour is important for crop establishment in rice. The present study was undertaken to characterize the rice genotypes using seed vigour influencing physio-biochemical traits, as well as, molecular profiling based on microsatellite markers to investigate molecular level genetic divergence and population structure pattern among a set of rice genotypes and to evaluate the marker trait association, if any, between marker phenotype and seed vigour related traits under consideration. Significant genotypic differences were observed for all physio-biochemical traits recorded in a set of locally adapted rice genotypes. On the basis of mean performance, six genotypes, namely, Rajendra Neelam, RAU1421-12-1-7-4-3, Vaidehi, Rajshree, RAU1415-35-76-9-5-3-4 and Rajendra Suwasini appeared to be superior entries based on the score of physio-biochemical traits. The correlation studies revealed, significant positive correlation of seed vigour with catalase, chlorophyll, carotenoid and amylose content. A significant positive correlation of higher order was observed among chlorophyll and carotenoid and between starch and amylopectin, although, correlation of starch with amylose was relatively weak. Significant positive correlation was also found between total anthocyanin, total flavonoids and total phenolics content. Catalase activity was positively correlated with superoxide dismutase activity. Negatively significant correlation was observed only between peroxidase activity and total flavonoid content, albeit of lower magnitude. First five principal component axes accounted for 82.6% of total variance between the sixteen recorded physio-biochemical traits. Starch, amylose, amylopectin, anthocyanin, phenolics and catalase appeared to be important classification variables, from this investigation. Average taxonomic distance based two-dimensional ordination identified three genotypes, namely, Rajendra Neelam, Sudha and RAU1451-66-1-1-5-1 to be relatively more diverse from rest of the genotypes based on physio-biochemical traits. Simple sequence repeats-based polymorphism survey in 18 genotypes of rice using 38 microsatellite markers detected a total of 275 allelic variants with an average of 7.2 alleles per primer. Polymorphism information content of 38 SSR primer pairs ranged from 0.593 to 0.877 with an average value of 0.766 and polymorphism per cent reflecting the proportion of unique alleles ranged from 0% to 57.14% with an average value of 34.40%. Out of 38 primer pairs, RM85, RM205, RM328, RM337, RM6275, RM7003, RM7364 and RM14978 appeared to be relatively more polymorphic and informative primers. Analysis of genetic divergence revealed ample molecular level genetic variation and allowed differentiation and classification of rice genotypes into four groups. Structure analysis revealed that the targeted genomic regions of eighteen rice genotypes are basically the admixtures of different combinations of three ancestral components. Single marker analysis detected the association of the traits, namely, amylose, total protein, total anthocyanin, total flavonoids, total phenolics, starch, carotenoids, total chlorophyll, chlorophyll a, chlorophyll b, seed vigour index I, superoxide dismutase, catalase and peroxidase with the molecular markers. Association of the trait, catalase with marker RM5310 located on chromosome 1, amylose with marker RM440 on chromosome 5, total anthocyanin with marker RM547 on chromosome 8 and total flavonoid with marker RM286 and RM547 on chromosome 11 and 8, respectively were also reported in earlier study and was validated in this investigation. The marker-trait association can be further validated and effectively utilized in marker-assisted selection program for improvement in marker-associated trait of interest.