Research Facilities
The Department has seven labs. The UG and PG labs are equipped to provide hands on practical experience to UG, PG and Ph.D. students. Molecular Biology Lab, Tissue culture lab, Stress Physiology lab, Biomass lab and Nutrient diagnosis lab to carry out molecular physiology research.
Research Equipments
The Department has number of equipments for basic and applied research. Major equipments in the department are: Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometer, Chlorophyll content meter, Chlorophyll Fluorescence meter, Chlorophyll SPAD meter, Deep freezer, Ethylene detector, Gel documentation system, Integrated light meter, Interval shot cameras, IR thermometers, Leaf Area Meter, Mini weather station, Nitrogen analyser, Osmometer, PCR & Real time, PCRPenetrometer, Refractometer Plant Growth Chamber, Portable Ethylene analyser, Respirometer, Portable Photosynthesis System, Pressure Bomb apparatus, Refrigerated centrifuge, Ripening Chamber, Root Image Analyzer, Sap flow gauge, Thermal imager, Thermocycler, Tissue lyser,UV Spectrophotometer, Western Blot Analyzer.
UG and PG lab
The Under Graduate laboratory in the Department is actively engaged in providing hands on practical experience to nearly 50 students at a time for all the UG degree programmes namely, B.Sc. (Hons.) Agri, B.Sc. (Hons.) Horti, B.Tech (Biotech), B.Tech (Horti) and B.Tech (AIT). The lab is fully equipped with instruments like Microscopes, Centrifuge, Spectrophotometer, water bath, leaf area meter, pressure bomb apparatus, EC and pH meters to asses fundamental physiological parameters viz., plant water status, photosynthetic pigments,stomatal index and frequency, hormonal bioassays and biochemical constituents and enzyme activities.
The Post Graduate laboratory in the Department pays attention to offer hands on training to PG and Ph.D. scholars. 12 PG and 10 Ph.D. courses is designed with practicals are conducted in these laboratories addressing plant developmental biology, photosynthesis and crop productivity, plant nutrition, stress physiology, seed physiology and horticultural physiology.
Molecular Biology Lab
Molecular Biology Lab was established with a generous funding from Department of Science and Technology-Fund for Infra structure. Genetic dissection of abiotic stresses namely drought, high temperature, salinity and flooding is progressing by applying molecular marker technology. The focus on stress responsive gene expression profiling identifying C4 pathway genes, genes responsible to improve shelf-life of fruits, genes controlling agronomical traits like NUE, yield and quality using molecular biology tools.
Plant Tissue culture lab
Standardisation of regeneration protocols for many agriculturally important crops is done in Tissue culture lab. Plant secondary metabolites, isolation and characterization of Plant Growth Promoting Rhizospere micro-organisms and identification of progenies with abiotic stress tolerance are being carried out in this lab. The plant tissue culture and transformation course for PG students is handled in this lab.
Stress Physiology lab
The studies aiming towards understanding the physiological basis of abiotic stress tolerance in various crops including cereals, millets, pulses, oil seeds, cotton and horticulture crops are taken up using the lab facilities. Postharvest physiological studies in different fruits and vegetables are carried out using cold/ripening chambers, ethylene detector, NIR produce quality meters, refractrometer and penetrometer.
Biomass lab
The major challenge in crop production is to increase in biomass with less inputs. The lab has hot air ovens to dry the plant samples and weighing machines to calculate the dry matter partitioning efficiency of crop plants. The lab also hosts nutrient digester and fumehood for digestion of plant samples for nutrient analysis.
Nutrient Disorder Diagnosis Lab
The lab has atomic absorption spectrophotometer for quantitative determination of major and micro nutrients. We have been forerunners in the technical development of multi-nutrient products with plant growth regulators to cater to the specific needs of the crop. Department is developing first of its kind in India, state of art ultra-fast plant nutrient analysis methods for real time diagnosis of nutrient deficiency and toxicity using Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) and X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (XRF).