Indians win most international scholarships for rice, wheat research

India has achieved a milestone of producing the highest number of winners in the Monsanto Beachell-Borlaug International Scholarship Programme (MBBISP).

Till date, India has 24 MBBISP scholars from a total of 89 awardees worldwide that includes 30 nations.

The MBBISP programme is the premier scholarship programme that encourages research in rice and wheat breeding.

This year, India has seen three more students being added to this list, who will receive the MBBISP Research Scholarships.

These three students are Gurcharn Singh Brar working in the area of improving genetic resistance to Fusarium Head Blight in durum & brea wheat; Sreya Ghosh, whose Ph.D. project focuses on developing and fine tuning methods for unbiased gene cloning in wheat; and Karminderbir Kaur, who is working in the area of development of an in vivo haploid induction system in rice through distant hybridization & manipulation of CenH3 gene.

MBBISP was launched in India in 2009 by eminent scientist M.S. Swaminathan. It has provided financial support of over $3 million since 2009 to the 24 Indian students that has helped them in pursuing their PHD in plant breeding of wheat or rice at top agricultural universities in India and globally.