About Department
Crop Breeding plays an incredible role in the development of newer and desired plant varieties for food, feed and industrial uses. Developed crop varieties have to meet current demands regarding yield, disease resistance, quality characteristics, salt or drought tolerance and suitability for sustainable plant production systems. Crop Breeding involves a multifaceted functionality, ranging from the molecular level to the population level and requires knowledge on the crop physiology, ecology and genetics of cultivated plants. The application of various molecular techniques contributes significantly to the rapid identification of genes for natural resistance and is very crucial for accelerating the rapid selection through marker-assisted breeding.
Best preparation options for diverse student groups are ensured in the current syllabi. The PBG department have a recognition on similarities and differences existing in different sectors of crop breeding enabling faculty to design appropriate courses, dissertation topics, seminars, practicum, internships etc.,for integrating new technologies and methods to revolutionize crop breeding.
The course syllabi for crop breeding programme integrate both knowledge and expression of outputs towards betterment of crop research process. The department exhibit due crop genetic resources for identification of donors for key traits for excellent phenotyping and genotyping through field experiments and laboratory analysis. Apart from utilizing the optimized genotyping protocols and statistical procedures, crop breeding models have chosen to work on location specificity and climate change. Post graduate students from the Master Plant Breeding are unique trained professionals can able to contribute to the sustainable development of crop production at various integration, levels applying their fundamental knowledge and interdisciplinary approach in crop sciences. Graduates with a research focus are employed at universities, research institutes and plant breeding or agribusiness incubation centres besides ensured job opportunities are in management, policy, consultancy and communication in agribusiness and other NGOs organisations.
Objectives
- Breeding and evaluation of new crop varieties and hybrids for Southern districts of Tamil Nadu
- Production of breeder and truthfully labelled seeds of rice and pulses
- Dissemination of the findings to the farmers by conducting farmer’s days, field days, training programmes through mass media.
- Offering undergraduate and postgraduate courses with the state of the art techniques and motivating students for higher education