The ecology and environment club of Maitreyi College organized a seminar on Plant Fungus Interactions: New insights in the era of genomics, which included a lecture by Dr. Praveen Verma. All students were welcomed.
He was welcomed by Dr. Reena Majumdar, senior teacher of Botany Department. Dr. Verma is a staff scientist, working at National Institute of Plant Genome Research, Jawaharlal Nehru University, on the same. He started his lecture with briefing students on the importance of this topic of research. He covered various topics from history to present, talking about the major misshapen in the past like Irish Famine and Bengal famine; means by which the pathogens have become more dangerous and difficult to deal with. He provided students with interesting facts about immunity of plants, the steps involving the process of infection, advancing technologies like PTI, ETI, plant defence response, anatomist, approach for developing resistant technologies, etc.
His communicative means of expressing complicated studies along with interactive ppts kept students engaged and helped them gain much knowledge. Since it was his first time in explaining research related work to undergraduate students, he effectively used simple words and direct language, explaining meaning of unfamiliar terminologies side by side. After the end of the lecture, teachers and few students asked Dr. Verma questions about position of India in tackling such problems. He answered that governments have now started playing attention to pulses and crop plants because damage to them, could prove to be damage for their party as well. He also answered question about techniques helpful in crop improvement.
The program ended with prize distribution for card making and Jigyasa- quiz competitions. Card making and Jigyasa were themed on botany and plant related things; which took place before the lecture and judged by senior teachers.
Source: Kavya Bisaria, click4college Specialist