Biocontrol strategies: An Eco-smart tool for integrated pest & diseases management

ICAR-Directorate of Onion and Garlic Research, India Dr Suresh Gawande is a Principal Scientist at ICAR-Directorate of Onion and Garlic Research, Pune, India. He obtained his Ph.D. from the Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi, India in the discipline of Plant Pathology. His areas of interest are genomics of biotic and abiotic stress, host-pathogen-vector interaction of tospoviruses, biological control, microbial metagenomics, plant-pathogen diagnostics, mechanism of genetic and induced host plant resistance. Currently, he is working on biotechnological approaches for biotic stress management.

Graphic Era (Deemed to be University), India Dr Durgesh Kumar Jaiswal is an Assistant Professor at Graphic Era (Deemed to be University, India). His research focuses on micro-biotechnology, soil-microbiology, and sustainable agriculture, primarily exploring and formulating the microbial consortium for phyto-stimulator of crops, biodegradation of pesticides, and integrated pest and disease management to provide solutions for agriculture sustainability. He is an editorial board member of BMC Microbiology and BMC Plant Biology.

ICAR-Indian Institute of Vegetable Research, India Dr Ram Krishna obtained his doctorate from Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development, Banaras Hindu University and presently working as Post-doctoral fellow (Plant-Biotechnology) at ICAR-Indian Institute of Vegetable Research. His research is focused for sustainable agriculture by biotechnological interventions in vegetable crops especially biotic and abiotic stress management through genetic engineering, advance breeding, and microbial application based approaches.

ICAR-Directorate of Onion and Garlic Research, India Soumia P.S. obtained her PhD Degree in Entomology from the ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi and presently working as a Scientist at ICAR- Directorate of Onion and Garlic Research, Pune, India. Her research focuses on different aspects of Insect Pest Management (IPM) especially in Host plant resistance, Biological control, Insect Toxicology, Insect Molecular Biology, Storage entomology and Weather based forecast modeling.

University of Zurich, Switzerland Dr Anukool Vaishnav is working as a Post-Doctoral Scientist (Swiss excellence fellow) at University of Zurich, Switzerland. He is also associated with Department of Biotechnology, GLA University, India as an Assistant Professor. His research is mainly focused on microbial-mediated plant protection against biotic and abiotic stresses and characterization of signaling molecules and secondary metabolites (soluble and VOCs) in plant holobionts.