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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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20231
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Subject: Genetics and Plant Breeding × Author: RS, ASWATHY NAIR × Thesis Type: M.Sc ×
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    AGRO-MORPHOLOGICAL EVALUATION AND MOLECULAR CHARACTERIZATION FOR GRAIN ZINC CONCENTRATION OF RICE GENOTYPES
    (RPCAU, Pusa, 2023) RS, ASWATHY NAIR; Nilanjaya
    The present investigation was undertaken with thirty five rice genotype which were presumed to be biofortified to study the variability and genetic parameter in addition to character association, path effects for yield and quality parameter, genetic divergence study among the genotypes and to evaluate genetic diversity in grain Zinc content using microsatellite spanning primers in the representative population. This study involved ten quantitative characters viz. Plant height, Panicle length, Days to 50% flowering, Days to physiological maturity, No: of panicles per plant, Spikelet fertility, 1000 grain weight, No: of grains per panicle, Zinc content in rice grains, Grain yield per plant. The results have revealed high phenotypic and genotypic coefficient of variation for Grains per panicle, high heritability coupled with genetic advance as per cent of mean for traits like plant height, Days to 50% flowering, Days to physiological maturity, No. of panicles per plant, spikelet fertility,1000 grain weight, No. of grains per panicle, zinc content in rice grains, grain yield per plant. The results of character association revealed that No. of panicles per plant, Spikelet fertility, No. of grains per panicle and 1000 grain weight were positively and significantly associated with grain yield per plant. So indirect selection of these trait would be fruitful. Path coefficient analysis showed that traits like No. of panicles per plant, Spikelet fertility, No. of grains per panicle, 1000 grain weight, and zinc content in rice grains exhibited positive direct effects on grain yield per plant indicating the effectiveness of these traits in improvement of grain yield per plant towards development of high yielding genotypes with good nutritional quality. The current study assess genetic diversity and to determine the Zn value by Atomic absorption spectrometry. Zinco rice and R-RGY-MH-113 had highest zinc value of respectively. Based on the tocher method shown that the total genotypes are clustered into nine clusters in which cluster IV had the maximum genotypes followed by cluster I and cluster II. The inter cluster distance, the maximum inter cluster distance was observed between cluster VIII and cluster IX followed by cluster V and cluster IX. Therefore, it was concluded that diverged genotypes from these groups can be utilized as better parents for future breeding programmes. Thirteen microsatellite spanning primers were used for the amplification. Except OsYSL6K all the other primers resulted in successful amplification. A total of 49 allelic variants were amplified using the above mentioned primers in which four primer viz. OsZIP7K, OsYSL2K, OsNRAMP7K and OsNACK amplified a single unique allele each and the primer OsZIP5K produced two unique alleles, typically 4.08 alleles per locus, with a range of 1to 6 alleles per primer. The examined rice genotypes are clustered into four broad clusters with a clear differentiation of genotypes into low, moderate and high concentration of grain zinc in them.