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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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Author: Chaurasia, Surendra Kumar × End date: 2015 × Start date: 2015 × Thesis Type: M.Sc ×
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    ThesisItemOpen Access
    Characterization of wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) genotypes with respect to heat stress tolerance and spot blotch resistance
    (Rajendra Agricultural University, Pusa (Samastipur), 2015) Chaurasia, Surendra Kumar; Kumar, Rajeev
    Twelve wheat (Triticumaestivum L.) genotypes were characterized with respect to heat stress and spot blotch diseaseunder four environmental conditions viz. no stress (E1), stress due to spot blotch (E2), heat stress (E3) and combined stress (E4) alongwith molecular characterization using 28 SSR markers(associated with tolerance against heat stress and resistance against spot blotch disease). The experimental materials were evaluated in randomized block design (RBD) factorial. Observation on 1000-grain weight, grain filling duration (GFD), plant height, peduncle length, spike length, disease severity and area under disease progress curve (AUDPC) were recorded. Significant differences were observed among the genotypes for all the traits under consideration. Genotype × environment were found non-significant. The lowest performance of the genotypes under combined stress condition (E4) was recorded. The individual impact of heat stress with respect to performance of the genotype was found significantly higher than that caused by spot blotch disease. Raj 3765 for 1000-grain weight, WH 760 for GFD, Yangmai-6 for plant height, PBW 343 for peduncle length and HD 2733 for spike length, showed stable performance across the environment. On the basis of stress susceptibility index (SSI) the genotypes WH 760, DBW 14 and Raj 3765 were found better for the characters, 1000-grain weight and GFD. The overall disease severity was found maximum under heat stress condition. Similarly genotypes were having relatively more AUDPC under heat stress condition. The twenty eight SSR markers detected total 244 alleles in 12 genotypes, the number of alleles per locus varied from four in Xgwm133a and Xgwm456 to twenty three in Xgwm293with an average of 6.5 alleles per locus. A total 158 unique alleles were observed at 37 SSR loci, with an average of 5.6 unique alleles per locus. The number of unique alleles per locus ranged from one in Xgwm273 to twenty two in Xgwm293. In set of 12 varieties, 6 SSR loci showed null alleles, in case of primer pair Xbarc1047, Xgwm133a, Wmc168,cfd44, Xbarc147 and Xgwm626.The polymorphism information content(PIC) values revealing allele diversity and frequency among the entries varied from 0.292 in the case of Wmc273 to 0.902 in the case of Xgwm356 with an average of 0.763 across the primer. Pair-wise genetic similarity coefficient, widely varied from 0.72 to 0.82 indicating a considerably greater extent of variation among the wheat genotypes. High degree of similarity coefficient exists between wheat genotypes Raj 3765 and PBW 343 (0.828) or WH 760 and DBW 14 (0.828), whereas Sonalika and HD 2967 (0.721) weremost distantly related. Cluster analysis grouped twelve wheat genotypes into four different clusters (I to IV) at 35 phenon level, the use of twenty eight SSR markers allowed unique genotyping of twelve genotypes included in the analysis.