Ram Nair
Ram began his career in 1986 as an Agricultural Officer (Extension) in the Department of Agriculture, Government of Kerala in India after completing his Bachelor‘s degree in Agriculture from the Kerala Agricultural University and Master’s degree in Agriculture with specialisation in plant breeding and genetics from the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University. He worked on the ‘Genetic analysis of productivity in relation to maturity in groundnut‘ for his PhD studies at Kerala Agricultural University before moving to Australia.
Ram worked as forage breeder in Australia for ten years at the South Australian Research and Development Institute (SARDI) in Adelaide and for four years at the Department of Natural Resources and Environment, Victoria. There he worked on a range of plant species including Medicago, Trifolium, Trigonella, Melilotus and Lolium. Ram completed the professional Management Program from the School of Business, University of Adelaide in 2010.
Ram is currently working as Legume breeder at AVRDC- The World Vegetable Center, based at its South Asia center in Hyderabad, India. AVRDC has a global mandate to work on mungbean, vegetable soybean, vegetable cowpea and yard long beans. He is also the Regional Secretary (India) for SABRAO (Society for Advancement of Breeding Researches in Asia and Oceania) and a member of the Editorial Board of SABRAO Journal of Breeding and Genetics.
In addition to the development of improved varieties he has published 25 journal articles, 35 conference papers and four book chapters on topics including breeding systems for plants, aphid resistance in Medicago truncatula (a model legume species), herbicide tolerance and polyploidy breeding. Ram won the AW Howard Memorial Travel grant in 2006, SARDI Achievement Award- Breakthrough Innovation of the Year-2008 and the SARDI Achievement Award- Best publication of the Year-2009.
Abstracts this author is presenting: