Tamil Nadu Agricultural University is organising a two-day training program on “Genome to Phenome in crop improvement” on 11.03.26 and 12.03.26 at the university.
The students of the University and Kerala Agricultural University participated in this training program.
Kokila Devi, Head, Department of Plant Biotechnology, CPMB&B at the university, delivered the welcome address. She mentioned the importance of integrating phenomics and genomics for developing climate-resilient crops.
Senthil, Director of CPMB&B, gave insights about the workshop and highlighted the significance of improvement in genomics technologies, utilisation of phenomics/Drone platform for crop improvement program.
The training program was conducted under the DBT Builder programme, which is meant for interdisciplinary research and the establishment of infrastructure facilities for carrying out an advanced research program.
He also mentioned that training manpower is an important criterion for future research, and phenotyping of research trials can be carried out using a phenomics/Drone platform. The precise voluminous data generated by the phenomics studies can be analysed using several AI tools.
Further genomic selection of research materials can be applied for selecting suitable crosses, and it can be integrated with genome information generated by advanced next-generation sequencing technologies.
The future researchers should be equipped with multiple skills for carrying out multidisciplinary research, he added.
Umarani, Director, Seed Centre, in her inaugural address, mentioned the importance of advanced phenotyping platforms in seed certification and the key points to be followed for the production of genetically pure seed materials.
Arul, Head, Department of Plant Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, CPMB&B, proposed a vote of thanks.
It was followed by the technical sessions inwhich the resource persons explained about the concepts of Genomics-assisted breeding for developing multiple stress-tolerant crops, developing non-lodging versions of popular varieties through Marker-assisted breeding, screening methodologies using phenomics platform, De novo assembly of crop genomes and SNP genotyping platforms for crop improvement programs.
