Dr. C. Viswanathan is Joint Director (Research) and Principal Scientist in Indian Agriculture Research Institute. Dr Viswanathan done his Ph.D (Field of Specialisation : Abiotic stress response of Plants) from Indian Agriculture Research Institute, New Delhi.
Awards / Recognitions / Fellowship (Upto Five) :
- Fellow of National Academy of Agricultural Sciences, NAAS, New Delhi
- Fellow of Indian Society for Plant Physiology, IJPP, New Delhi
- Jawaharlal Nehru Award for best post-graduate agricultural research (2001), ICAR, New Delhi
- J.J. Chinoy Gold Medal, 2012, Indian Society for Plant Physiology, New Delhi
- BOYSCAST Fellowship, 2001, DST, Ministry of Science & Technology, Govt. of India
Patent / Technologies / Methodologies / System etc. (Upto Five) :
- Plant Phenomics: Contributed to the establishment of automated high throughput Plant Phenomics Facility and generation of more than 36 million image phenome data. Identified genotypes of rice and wheat with high WUE & NUE
- ABA signalling pathway: Contributed to the elucidation of ABA-Receptors and the core-components of the ABA signalling pathway of stress response. Also contributed to the identification synthetic ligands and orthogonal receptor engineering for stress manag
- MicroRNA biogenesis pathway: Contributed to the identification and elucidation of the role of two novel proteins namely SICKLE1 and STABILIZED1 involved in microRNA biosynthesis and abiotic stress tolerance in Arabidopsis.
- Cold stress signalling pathway: Inducer of CBF Expression 1 (ICE1) was discovered as regulator of cold tolerance in Arabidopsis. This led to the discovery of ICE1 orthologs from different plant species and its use for engineering stress tolerance
- Genes and promoters cloned: Brassica napus group 4 LEA gene and promoter, Brassica carinata Zinc Finger TF (BcZF1), Arabidopsis & Rice ABA Receptors, Rice ICE1, tomato CYC-B promoter, Development of rice dst gene mutant by CRISPR-Cas9
Publications (Top 10 Publications having NAAS rating 6 and above with first or corresponding author only) :
- ABA receptor OsPYL6 confers drought tolerance to indica rice through dehydration avoidance and tolerance mechanisms. Journal of Experimental Botany DOI: 10.1093/jxb/eraa509
- Overexpression of ABA Receptor PYL10 gene confers drought and cold tolerance to indica rice. Frontiers in Plant Science 10:1488.doi: 10.3389/fpls.2019.01488
- Genome-wide identification and characterization of ABA receptor PYL gene family in rice. BMC Genomics 21:676 https://doi.org/10.1186/s12864-020-07083-y
- Auxin protects spikelet fertility and grain yield under drought and heat stresses in rice. Environmental and Experimental Botany 150: 9-24
- Arabidopsis proline-rich protein important for development and abiotic stress tolerance is involved in microRNA biogenesis. Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences USA 109: 18198-18203
- Fujii H*, Chinnusamy V*, Rodrigues A, Rubio S, Antoni R, Park SY, Cutler SR, Sheen J, Rodriguez PL, Zhu JK. 2009. In vitro reconstitution of an abscisic acid signalling pathway. Nature 462: 660-664 (*Joint First Authors)
- Chinnusamy V, Zhu JK. 2009. Epigenetic regulation of stress responses in plants. Current Opinion in Plant Biology 12: 133-139
- Chinnusamy V, Gong Z, Zhu JK. 2008. ABA-mediated epigenetic processes in plant development and stress responses. Journal of Integrative Plant Biology 50: 1187-1195
- Chinnusamy V, Zhu J, Zhu JK. 2007. Cold stress regulation of gene expression plants. Trends in Plant Science 12: 444-451
- Chinnusamy V, Ohta M, Kanrar S, Lee B.-h, Hong X, Agarwal M, Zhu JK. 2003. ICE1, a regulator of cold induced transcriptome and freezing tolerance in Arabidopsis. Genes and Development 17: 1043-1054