INTERNATIONAL BEST RESEARCHER AWARD
Dr. Awadhesh Kumar (Scientist, Plant Biochemistry) at ICAR-National Rice Research Institute, Cuttack has about 10 year experiences in biochemistry and molecular biology on nutritional aspects [phytic acid (PA), starch, antioxidants, glycemic index (GI) and resistant starch(RS)] of plants. During his Ph.D tenure at Division of Biochemistry, ICAR-IARI, New Delhi, He worked on biochemistry of raffinose family oligosaccharides, PA and their relationship with minerals bioavailability and antioxidant activity. He also developed transgenic soybean lines by down-regulating MIPS gene in PA biosynthetic pathway using RNAi and antisense technology and checked expression analysis of the gene. After joining at ICAR-NRRI as Scientist, He developed an efficient in vitro GI estimation protocol and validated with internationally reported in vivo GI value of rice variety Swarna and Sambha Mahsuri . The developed in vitro protocol is very useful for screening of large number of rice germplasm as he estimated GI for >100 genotypes. He also estimated GI of rice with other food condiments. He also standerdized RS estimation method for rice as it contains