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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: Kothari, Shubham × End date: 2020 × Start date: 2020 × Type: Thesis × Thesis Type: M.Sc ×
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    ThesisItemOpen Access
    Identification and characterization of important mineral transporters in rice (Oryza spp.)
    (DRPCAU, Pusa, 2020) Kothari, Shubham; Sharma, Vinay Kumar
    A study involving genome wide analysis of genomic and peptide sequences of eleven species and sub-species of rice (Oryza spp.) was undertaken for identification and characterization of Calcium and Cadmium mineral transporters. Retrieval and analysis of genomic and peptide sequences was carried out with the help of different methodologies and tools including SMART, MeV, FASTA, Clustal, Ortho-Venn, MEME suite, HAMMER and Cygwin64. Only 577 genes were identified as true transporters through annotation program among 797 calcium transporter gene sequences isolated from the database. Among these transporter genes, 452 proteins were orthologues, whereas, 25 genes were species specific. The maximum (63) and minimum (44) number of calcium transporters were identified in Oryza sativa indica and Oryza sativa japonica, respectively. Computational analysis of cadmium transporters revealed 885 genes for true transporters among 893 gene ids. Across all the species and sub-species, 585 proteins were orthologues, whereas 32 genes were species specific. The maximum (95) and minimum (67) number of cadmium transporters were identified in Oryza sativa indica and Oryza longistaminata, respectively. Phylogenetic analysis grouped the identified 452 calcium transporters in to five major super families, namely, PM_ATPase, CT_ATPase, CZT/CuT, PLT_ATPase, CACC/CPCC with majority of the mineral transporters belonging CT_ATPase family and a smaller number of transporters belonged to CZT/CuT_HMA family. Similarly, cadmium transporters were grouped into six major super families, namely, ABC type transporter; ATPase_type transporter; Sulphate transporter; Protein NRT1/ PTR family; Metal transporter NRAMP5 and MACPF domain-containing protein CAD1. Most of these mineral transporters belonged to ATPase_Type family and lowest number was found in NRAMP5 and CAD1 family. For calcium transporters, orthologous determination study revealed the maximum number of orthologous protein count in Oryza sativa indica (45), while its minimum number in Oryza sativa japonica (35) for calcium transporters. Similarly, for cadmium transporters, maximum number of orthologous protein count was found in three species (58), namely, Oryza barthii, Oryza sativa indica and Oryza punctata, whereas its minimum was recorded in Oryza sativa japonica (44). Motif analysis revealed the presence of some conserved domain ids in all the species and sub-species of rice under investigation in this study. Family distribution pattern of highest clustered protein indicated highest predominance of CT-ATPase (Calcium Transporter ATPase Transporter) sub-family of transporter proteins in the case of calcium. Similarly, ATPase-type transporter (ATPase dependent Transporter) sub-family was abundant with highest number of transporter sequences in the case of cadmium. Computational results provided the basis to infer gene expression in shoot tissues in the case of calcium, while gene expression seemed to occur only in seed without any expression in shoot/root/leaves in the case of cadmium. Furthermore, high level of expression of predicted calcium transporter genes into seeds and its parts rather than the shoot portion suggested that these proteins might be involved in calcium accumulation in seeds, embryo and endosperm parts. Nine gene ids (Os02t0176700-00, Os02t0196600-01, Os03t0203700-01, Os03t0281600-01, Os03t0689300-01, Os04t0605500-01, Os04t0656100-01, Os07t0191200-01, Os12t0638700-01) had sequence similarity in the case of both the minerals, reflecting that these genes are responsible for the transportation of both calcium and cadmium in Oryza sativa japonica. So, these may be considered as calcium-cadmium co-transporters. Experimental results showed that many of the sequences are distributed in the genome of different species and sub-species of rice. Significant evidences were generated for exploring the expression and function of these calcium and cadmium transporters under different environmental conditions at different tissues in plant to understand the molecular basis of mineral accumulation in developing grains.