Cold Tolerance in Plants

Dr. Shabir Hussain Wani is senior assistant professor at Mountain Research Centre for Field Crops, Khudwani -192101, Sher-e-Kashmir University  of Agricultural Sciences and Technology of Kashmir, J&K, India . He received his B.Sc. in agriculture from BhimRao Agricultural University Agra, India, and M.Sc. in genetics and plant breeding from Central Agricultural University, Manipur, India, and Ph.D. in plant breeding and genetics on transgenic rice for abiotic stress tolerance from the Punjab Agricultural University Ludhiana, India. After obtaining his Ph.D. he worked as research associate in the Biotechnology Laboratory, Central Institute of Temperate Horticulture (ICAR), Srinagar, India. He then joined the Krishi Vigyan Kendra (Farm Science Centre) as program coordinator  at Senapati, Manipur, India. He teaches courses related to plant breeding, seed science and technology, and stress breeding and has published more than 100 papers/chapters in journals and books of international and national repute. He served as guest editor and reviews editor for journal Frontier in Plant Science (2015-2018). He has also edited several books on current topics in crop improvement for abiotic stress tolerance published by Springer Nature and CRC Press USA. His Ph.D. research won first prize in the North Zone Competition, at national level, in India. He was awarded a Young Scientist Award from the Society for Promotion of Plant Sciences, Jaipur, India, in 2009. He is a fellow of the Society for Plant Research, India. Recently, he received Young Scientist Award (Agriculture) 2015 from Society for Plant Research, Meerut, India. He also served as visiting Scientist at Department of Plant Soil and Microbial Sciences, Michigan State University, USA under the UGC Raman Post Doctoral Fellowship programme. He has attended several international and national conferences, presenting his research.Dr. Venura Herath is a Senior Lecturer at Department of Agricultural Biology, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka. He obtained his Bachelor's degree in Agriculture from University of Peradeniya. His doctoral studies were carried out at University of Maine, USA on Transcriptional regulatory networks involved in plant responses to low temperature. After completion of PhD, he served as a senior lecturer at Department of Agricultural Biology, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka and he is currently serving as the Head of the Department. Dr. Herath teaches courses on functional and stress genomics at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. His findings on abiotic stress response gene networks are published in both national and international journals. Currently, he is working on development of future ready rice by modulating key transcriptional factors using transgenic and genome editing technologies. He won the Norris Charles Clements Graduate Student Award in 2011 and the Presidential Awards for Research Publications in 2012.