Streptomycetes: Biological Candidates for Sustainable Agriculture Biological Candidates for Sustainable Agriculture

Dr. Talwinder Kaur , Ph.D works as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Microbiology at Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, Punjab, India and has teaching experience of more than 8 years at the University and college level. She earned her Ph.D. in Microbiology from Department of Microbiology at Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, Punjab, India. Her area of research is exploration of microbes especially, Streptomyces for their antimicrobial, biocontrol and plant growth promoting potential. She has participated in many national and International conferences. She has guided 24 M.Sc students for their project work. She is also a holder of 1 patent. Dr. Kaur has an M.Sc. in Fermentation and Microbial Technology and a B.Sc. in Industrial Microbiology.

Dr. Harsh Kumar is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the Faculty of Materials Science and Technology at VSB-Technical University of Ostrava, Czechia. Dr. Kumar was former postdoc fellow in the Centre of Advanced Technologies, Faculty of Science, University of Hradec Králové, Czechia. He earned his Ph.D. in Food Technology from the School of Bioengineering and Food Technology at Shoolini University of Biotechnology and Management Sciences, Himachal Pradesh, India. His work involves developing an electrochemical immunosensor for the detection of antibiotics/toxins in food items. In addition, Dr. Kumar also has expertise in the isolation and identification of multidrug-resistant bacteria such as Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus from diverse sources. Dr. Kumar has an M.Sc. in Microbiology and a B.Sc. in Industrial Microbiology.

Dr. Rajesh Kumari Manhas (M.Sc., M.Phil., Ph.D.) is a retired Associate Professor, Microbiology, from Guru Nanak Dev University, India. She qualified National Level Test (conducted by CSIR) for the award of Junior and Senior Research Fellowships. She has received ten major research project grants from various funding agencies of Govt. of India like DST, UGC, ICAR, DBT, CSIR, and RUSA and a minor research project funded by GNDU. She has guided 7 students for the award of Ph.D. As a dedicated researcher, she has worked in the area of actinobacterial diversity and biotechnology, especially purification and characterization of novel antimicrobial compounds from Streptomyces active against drug resistant human pathogens and fungal phytopathoges, development of Streptomyces bioformulations for the protection of plants from phytopathogens, and improvement of plant growth. In addition to antimicrobial activities, she has also reported antioxidant, anticancerous and probiotic potential of bioactive compounds from Streptomyces spp. She has reported a new Streptomyces sp. (Streptomyces amritsarensis 2A) from Indian soil, and isolated two novel compounds from this novel sp., showing activity against drug resistant microbes.  She has nine MTCC microbial type culture collection contributions to her credit.