Two women scientists, Dr Mamta Sharma and Dr Pooja Bhatnagar-Mathur, have won International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics’ (ICRISAT) highest award for research Doreen Margaret Mashler Award for 2018 for significant work in their respective research fields of plant pathology and biotechnology.
Mamta Sharma works on epidemiology of plant diseases and pathogens, focusing on disease-resistant breeding in chickpea and pigeonpea. In 2017, she led the team that developed the Loop-Mediated Isothermal Amplification (LAMP) method to identify a pathogen affecting chickpea and over 500 crops globally.
Pooja Bhatnagar-Mathur was part of a landmark research to combat aflatoxin in groundnut using a ‘double-defence’ approach. She also had a role in successful isolation and characterisation of the gene responsible for cytoplasmic male sterility in pigeonpea. As a result of this research, ICRISAT had filed its first ever patent in 2016-17.
The award includes a plaque and a citation for each awardee. It will be presented during the ICRISAT Governing Board meeting in 2018.