Breeding for heat tolerance in Pearl millet: a pioneering effort at ICRISAT

SK Gupta has a Ph.D. in Plant Breeding and about 20 years of experience in breeding of several crops—pearl millet, chickpea, pigeon pea, green gram, red gram, Sesbania and black gram. In his earlier role as legume breeder, he released about 12 cultivars of different legume crops. He has been working with International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics since 2008 and is now leading the Pearl Millet Breeding Program at ICRISAT head quarters in India. He is engaged in the development of diverse range of pearl millet hybrid parents (both seed and restorer parents) which are utilized by public and private sector breeding program to develop hybrids for different geographies. Gupta is leading a consortium of seed companies engaged in pearl millet research, with about 30 members, and providing them materials for developing hybrids. He has been coordinating pearl millet breeding activities for ICRISAT in Eastern and Western African countries in some of the mega-projects. Recently, he was product line coordinator for the CGIAR Research Program – Dryland Cereals for promoting hybrids in SA and ESA countries. He has published about 70 research papers in prominent journals, is guiding post-graduate students, and is currently engaged in about 12 projects in different capacities.