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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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20201
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Subject: Agricultural Biotechnology × Author: Kumar, Ravi × End date: 2020 ×
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    ThesisItemOpen Access
    Molecular fingerprinting of locally adapted landraces and improved varieties of rice using ISSR markers
    (DRPCAU, Pusa, 2020) Kumar, Ravi; Bhutia, K.L.
    The level of genetic variability present in the population primarily depends on genetic progress. The molecular marker is a beneficial method for determining genetic variants and resolving the identities of cultivars. The goal of this research was to evaluate the diversity between 18 rice genotypes using 13 ISSR primers. Thirteen ISSR primers generated total of 81 amplified alleles with an average of 6.24 alleles per primer. Highest number of alleles i.e. 9 was obtained from the primer ISSR-834 and lowest 4 from ISSR-872 and out of 81 amplified alleles, five were rare alleles and eight were unique alleles. Amplified fragment size ranges from 148 bp to 2500 bp. Primer ISSR-880 showed very high PIC value (0.41) followed by four primers namely ISSR-872, ISSR-890, ISSR-823, ISSR-864 with high PIC values of 0.38, 0.32, 0.31, and 0.30, respectively, and rest of the primers showed medium PIC values ranging from 0.26 to 0.29. The highest value of EMR (7.11) was showed by the ISSR-834 followed by 7 in ISSR-890 and ISSR-864. The lowest value of EMR was observed in ISSR-888 and ISSR-846 with the value of 2.67 and 3.20, respectively and rest of the primers had EMR values ranging from 2.67 to 7.11. ISSR primers namely; ISSR-890, ISSR- 13 864, ISSR-834, ISSR-880 showed highest value (2.22, 2.10, 2.09 and 2.04) for marker index (MI) because these markers had higher value of either PIC or EMR or both (As MI is the product of PIC * EMR). ISSR-888 and ISSR-846 showed the lowest values (0.75 and 0.83) of MI and rest of the primers showed moderate value of MI ranging from 1.31 to 1.64. Resolving power of ISSR primers was highest in ISSR-890 (10.5) followed by ISSR-891 (9.55): ISSR-834 (8.78): and ISSR-841 (8.00). Primers with lowest RP values were ISSR-846 and ISSR-872 with RP of 2.89 and 2.44, respectively. Nei‟s Genetic Diversity (h) and Shannon Index (I) within the population of 18 genotypes yielded the value of 0.2961 and 0.4474, respectively, suggesting that the population of 18 rice genotypes is moderately diverse. Phylogenetic analysis and factorial analysis on the basis of Dice dissimilarity index grouped the 18 genotypes into 3 major cluster with cluster-I having the highest numbers of genotypes (eight genotypes) followed by cluster-II with six genotypes and cluster-III with four genotypes. The genetic Structure of 18 genotypes at K=2 (on the basis of 13 ISSR primers with 81 amplified loci) revealed that the 18 rice genotypes are the admixture of two ancestral components present in different combinations in 18 genotypes. The genetic structure explained by 81 amplified loci of 13 ISSR primers doesn‟t give the higher resolution of the actual genetic structure of 18 rice genotypes because the number of primers used is quite less and it is not known that how many chromosomes have been covered by these 81 amplified loci. However, the 13 ISSR primers used were sufficient enough to differentiate between the 18 genotypes under study with many of the primers having very high PIC, EMR, MI and RP values