The Department of Biotechnology at Sri Krishna Arts and Science College, Coimbatore organized the science academies’ virtual lecture workshop recently. The lectures were based on present and future advancements in the field of Life sciences.
The first session by Dr. R.R. Rao, INSA Honorary Scientist, focused on ‘Floral diversity’ of India. He emphasized on discovering new species and their characteristics for product invention. The second lecture by Dr. Sundaresan Velusamy, scientist from CSIR-CIMAP was based on DNA Barcoding and its importance in classification of species. He explained the importance of International code for nomenclature and shared his knowledge on recent trends in plant sciences like new crop implementation techniques, in vitro cultivation of plants and Plants facilitated drug discovery.
The second day started with the lecture of D J. Bagayaraj, INSA, Honorary Scientist & Chairman, CNBRCD, Bangalore. He highlighted the importance of soil biodiversity and maintenance of soil structure and regulation of soil hydrological processes, soil detoxification & plant growth control.
K. R. Shivanna, INSA Honorary Scientist and Honorary Senior Fellow, ATREE, Bangalore, focused on the Global pollinator crisis and its impact on crop productivity. He highlighted microorganisms as a source of human medicine. The last session of the two-day webinar, ended with an interesting lecture on the importance of wild relatives of crop plants to sustain food and nutritional security. The need to increase food productivity using all available avenues were explained to students of life science department.
Nearly 96 participants through google meet and 470 participants through Youtube participated in the event.