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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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20181
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Subject: Agricultural Biotechnology × Author: Kumar, Pradeep × Type: Thesis ×
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    ThesisItemOpen Access
    Molecular evaluation of sterility maintainers and fertility restorers for wild abortive rice cytoplasm
    (Dr. Rajendra Prasad Central Agricultural University, Pusa, Samastipur, 2018) Kumar, Pradeep; Sharma, V. K.
    A set of forty-five test crosses involving two wild abortive type cyto-sterile lines and twenty-eight pollen parents was evaluated to assess pollen and spikelet fertility restoration for identification of sterility maintainers and fertility restores of wild abortive cyto-sterility system in rice. Using a panel of thirty-two microsatellite primers, genetic polymorphism at molecular level was examined for characterization and differentiation of sterility maintainers and fertility restorers identified among pollen parents. Analysis of pollen and spikelet fertility in test crosses clearly reflected the sterility maintaining ability of pollen parents TCP-134-2, TCP-150-1, TCP-188-3 and TCP-185-3. Similarly, the pollen parents TCP-17-1, TCP-28-3, TCP-86-1, TCP-174-4, TCP-104-1, TCP-183-1, TCP-190-3, TCP-191-3 and TCP-193-3 were identified as effective fertility restorers. Altogether 256 allelic variants including 112 unique alleles and 144 shared alleles were identified with an average of 8.0 alleles per primer using a panel of 32 primer pairs covering all the chromosomes. The primer targeting tri-nucleotide and di-nucleotide repeat motifs, in general, detected more allelic variants than primers targeting tetra-nucleotide repeat motifs. Further, primers with GA, TG, AC, CT and TA di-nucleotide repeat motifs detected more allelic variants than the primers with TC and AG di-nucleotide repeat motifs. The primer pairs RM 216, RM 6100, RM 280, RM 3873, RM 10313, RM 558, RM 250, RM 283, RM 171, RM 3233, RM 341, RM 427, RM 206, RM 5373, RM 152, RM 591, RM 524 and RM 17 appeared to be highly polymorphic and comparatively more informative for the purpose of molecular profiling of entries. Analysis of divergence pattern allowed discrimination of effective fertility restorers from partial fertility restorers and complete sterility maintainers. Clustering pattern of the entries based on hierarchical classification, neighbour joining tree and principal co-ordinate analyses yielded more or less similar results. Allelic diversity data generated from amplification pattern of the six fertility restoration related primer pairs, namely, RM 591, RM 1108, RM 3233, RM 3873, RM 6100 and RM 8146, also unambiguously discriminated eight effective fertility restorers from two partial fertility restorers and four complete sterility maintainers. Therefore, these six primer pairs were validated with sufficiently greater efficiency (94.4%) for identification of sterility maintainers and fertility restorers of wild abortive type cyto-sterility sterility system in rice.