Honour for CICR acting director

NAGPUR: International Cotton Advisory Committee, Washington, has chosen Keshav R Kranthi, acting director, Central Institute for Cotton Research (CICR), for the ICAC Cotton Researcher of the Year award for year 2009. The award carries an honorarium of US$1,000 and a shield. The award will be presented to Kranthi after the plenary session of the committee in September at Cape Town in South Africa.He is expected to make a presentation about his work in the field of cotton during this session and also another meeting at Germany in March 2010.
He has made it to the award from among twelve candidates from eight countries in three disciplines of breeding/production, plant protection and biotechnology.
Kranthi has bagged the honour for his exemplary contribution for developing farmer friendly, cheap Bt cotton detection kits which were commercialised and directly contributed to the reduction in spurious Bt cotton seed in India. He is also known for his contributions in evolving various insect resistance management (IRM) strategies for various cotton growing regions in the entire country for cotton and the IRM strategies for Bt cotton. He developed an extensive database on boll worm resistance to insecticides and Bt-toxins, the resistance mechanisms.