Advisory Board and Editors Agricultural Science
Charles D Johnson
Dr. Johnson earned his BS and PhD from Texas A&M University, with an intermediate MS degree from Clemson University. He completed a postdoc at the University of Louisville, leading to his role as associate director of bioinformatics for the Center for Genetics and Molecular Medicine at the same institution. He played a foundational role in creating the statistics and bioinformatics division at Ambion/Asuragen Inc. Following this, Dr. Johnson founded BioMath Solutions LLC, a bioinformatics-focused startup specializing in software development for genomic technology firms.
Presently, Dr. Johnson serves as the Director of Genomics and Bioinformatics Service at Texas A&M AgriLife.
Sanket J. Joshi
Sanket Joshi is currently serving as a Professor and Deputy Director, at Amity Institute of Microbial Technology, Amity University Rajasthan, Jaipur, India. He served as Deputy Director, Oil & Gas Research Center (2018-2023), and an Application Specialist, at Central Analytical and Applied Research Unit, Sultan Qaboos University, Oman (2013-2023). He holds BSc and MSc degrees from Sardar Patel University, India, and a PhD degree from M. S. University of Baroda, India – all in Microbiology. Dr. Joshi has 18 years of academic teaching and research experience, and 4 years of industrial R&D experience, in India and Oman. While working in Indian pharma companies, he undertook several turnkey projects (both upstream and downstream) on antibiotics (β-lactams, macrolides, glycopeptides), antidiabetic drug (for type II diabetes), and Co-enzyme Q10. His current research interests encompass: Energy (In-situ/ex-situ microbial enhanced light/heavy oil recovery; chemical enhanced oil Recovery; biofuels); Microbial products (biosurfactants, biopolymers, R&D and scale-up); and Environmental bioremediation (crude oil pollution; analysis, mitigation, and control of souring by Sulfate reducing bacteria; HPAM contaminated sites). Those research projects are multidisciplinary, involving both biotechnology and engineering disciplines. Since he joined SQU, his research team has received over 5.44 million USD in research grants and service contracts and established bioproducts for petroleum and environmental applications. He has 198 scientific publications as papers in international journals (95), book chapters (23), conference proceedings (67), international books (12), and one Australian Innovation Patent to his credit. Dr. Joshi serves as an Academic/Associate Editor for some of the highly reputed journals: Frontiers in Microbiology, PeerJ, BMC Biotechnology, Ecotoxicology, Petroleum Science and Technology, Applied Biochemistry and Biotechnology, and Heliyon. He is book series editor of ‘Advances in Biotechnology and Bioengineering', Elsevier INC.; Guest editor for Frontiers in Microbiology, Energies, Sustainability, Scientifica, Biocatalysis and Agricultural Biotechnology, Applied Biochemistry and Biotechnology, Environmental Quality Management, and Open Biotechnology Journal; and a recognized reviewer for different journals (Elsevier, Springer Nature, T&F, Wiley/AOCS, RSC, ACS, Hindawi, DE Gruyter, MDPI and others). He served as an intermediate guide for 30 undergrad/grad students and 3 PhD students, in India and in Oman; an active member of MEOR research team at SQU since 2009 and established a state of art research and service laboratory at SQU. He was awarded as “NRI Senior Scientist Award”, from Microbiologists Society, India, during academic year, 2019-2020. He has 4329 citations, h-index of 31, and i10 index of 61 (Google Scholar), and was listed among the 2% of the "Stanford University – Elsevier” list of the highly cited scientists in the world for - 2022 and 2023, for excellence in scientific research in ‘Energy’ and ‘Biotechnology’ disciplines.
Dr. Gandhiv Kafle
Dr. Gandhiv Kafle is an Ecologist and Associate Professor in the Faculty of Forestry at the Agriculture and Forestry University, Nepal.
His research interests include forestry, watershed management and ecology.
Hironori Kaminaka
Associate Professor of Faculty of Agriculture, Tottori University, Japan; Past Postdoctoral Fellow of University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA; Past postdoctoral Fellow of National Institute of Agrobiological Sciences, Japan; Ph. D. obtained in Kyoto Prefectural University, Japan.
Julia Kehr
Professor Hamburg University, Germany
Professor Politechnic University Madrid, Spain
Group Leader Max Planck Institute Potsdam, Germany
Naeem Khan
Dr. Naeem Khan is a plant physiologist in the Department of Agronomy at the University of Florida. His expertise includes plant microbe interactions, phytohormones, plant metabolites, rhizosphere and responses of plant to biotic and abiotic stresses.
Amanullah Khan
Dr. Amanullah is currently working as Professor in the Department of Agronomy, Faculty of Crop Production Sciences, The University of Agriculture Peshawar, Pakistan. Dr. Amanullah has published/edited more than 23 books/reports and 250 research papers/chapters in peer reviewed journals including more than 110 papers in the impact factor journals.
Dr. Amanullah is the co-author in few books published by UN-FAO e.g. (1): Soil and Pulses: Symbiosis for Life (2016) (2): Unlocking the Potential of Soil Organic Carbon (2017), (3): Soil Pollution: a hidden reality (2018), (4): Measuring and modelling soil carbon stocks and stock changes in livestock production systems – Guidelines for assessment (2019), and (5): Water use of livestock production systems and supply chains – Guidelines for assessment (2020), etc.
Dr. Amanullah also edited some books with Intech Open e.g.: (1): Rice - Technology and Production (2017), (2): Nitrogen in Agriculture-Updates (2018), (3): Corn: Production and Human Health in Changing Climate (2018), and (4): Agronomy - Climate Change & Food Security (2020), etc.
Dr. Amanullah has been awarded with three Research Productivity Awards by the Pakistan Council for Science and Technology (PCST), Islamabad in 2011-12, 2012-13, and 2015-16. Dr. Amanullah represented Pakistan in the FAO Intergovernmental Technical Panel on Soil (ITPS) in the Global Soil Partnership (2015-2018).
Shahryar F. Kianian
Research Leader, USDA-ARS Cereal Disease Laboratory. Previously, Professor of genetics and plant improvement, Department of Plant Sciences, North Dakota State University. Faculty of Cellular & Molecular Biology and Genomics interdisciplinary programs. Recipient of 2002 Yaggie Excellence in Research Award, 1989 Withaker Prize, and 1984 Gerard Award.
Ravindra Kumar
Dr. Ravindra Kumar is a Senor Scientist (Plant Pathology) at Crop Protection Division, ICAR-Indian Wheat and Barley Research Institute, Karnal-132 001 (Haryana). He obtained his M.Sc. (Ag.) and Ph.D. (Ag.) from the Department of Mycology and Plant Pathology, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi in 2007 and 2010, respectively. He was selected as ARS Scientist in ICAR, New Delhi in ARS-2009 batch. His areas of research interest include Host-Pathogen Interaction, Fungal Pathology, Biological Control of Phytopathogens, Mycology, Seed Pathology, and Plant Disease Management. He has published more than 32 research papers and reviews in reputed national and international journals, and has more than 50 technical and popular articles to his credit. He has also written two text books on plant pathology.
Dr Ravindra Kumar has excellent scientific writing and editing skills. Recently he edited book entitled as "Seed-Borne Diseases of Agricultural Crops: Detection, Diagnosis & Management" published by Springer, Singapore. He has edited several technical bulletins and annual reports. He has been associated with several professional/research societies of national and international repute.
Ravinder Kumar
Ravinder Kumar is working as Sr. Scientist (Plant Pathology) at the Division of Plant Protection, ICAR-Central Potato Research Institute, Shimla, India. His present project is 'Diagnosis and management of viral diseases of potato'. He was Principal Investigator of Accredited lab for virus indexing under National Certification System for tissue culture raised plants funded by Department of Biotechnology, Govt. of India. He has over 15 years of research experience in the management of biotic and abiotic stresses in plants, plant biotechnology, specifically the formulation of dsRNA for plant diseases, the development of transgenic lines against pathogen resistance, plant genetic resource management, molecular characterization, and genome sequencing of plant pathogens. He was associated in developing infectious clones of virus isolates for virus resistance testing. He was also involved in the first demonstration of RNAi-mediated resistance against bacteria, as well as the ability of siRNA to inhibit the Avr3a gene responsible for virulence in susceptible potato cultivars using an RNAi approach, and confirmed moderate resistance to late blight. For the past 12 years, he has been involved with potato research in molecular diagnostics of potato diseases, and he has developed several diagnostic tools for the detection of potato pathogens, such as uniplex/multiplex RT-PCR, real-time RT-PCR, LAMP, and RT-RPA protocols, which are being successfully used in healthy seed potato production systems, mother plants, germplasm, and post-entry. He has over 60 articles published in national/international peer-reviewed journals and have received awards such as the IPA-Kaushalya Sikka Memorial Award, the Chandra Prabha Singh Young Scientist Award, the Young Scientist Associate Award, and best oral/poster awards from various scientific professional societies/institutions. He is acting as reviewer for many internationally recognized and reputed scientific journals. He is a member of editorial board as an Academic editor of the "Life and Environment - PeerJ", Academic editor of PLOS ONE, Associate Editor of BMC Plant Biology, Associate Editor of Journal of Plant Growth Regulation, Associate Editor of Plant Growth Regulation, Associate Editor of Frontiers in Microbiology, Guest Associate editor of Frontiers in Plant Science and Frontiers in Agronomy.
Sushil Kumar
Dr. Sushil Sarswat is Assistant Professor in the Department of Agricultural Biotechnology at Anand Agricultural University, India. He undertook his Ph.D. research at the ICRISAT, India in the area of plant molecular breeding.
Dr. Sarswat's research interests include QTL mapping, GWAS, crop genetics and genomics, diversity genomics. He is also a member of the editorial board for 3Biotech (Springer).
Imren Kutlu
Dr. Imren Kutlu received her Ph.D. in quantitative genetics from Eskisehir Osmangazi University of Eskisehir- Turkey, in 2012. She worked as a research assistant in the Agricultural Faculty in Eskisehir Osmangazi University–Turkey between 2007-2019. Following this, Dr. Kutlu became Associate Professor of Plant Breeding and Genetics at Eskisehir Osmangazi University, Agricultural Faculty, Field Crops Department.
During her Ph.D. she was skilled with quantitative genetics of cereals crops and applying in breeding of cereal yield and quality. In addition, she studied about agronomical techniques of cereals and legumes cultivation. In her postdoctoral studies, she focused on molecular genetics techniques, which helped her study molecular breeding of cereals crops, particularly for abiotic stress tolerance.
Since 2019. Dr. Kutlu has been researching plant molecular genetics, breeding for cereals crops under the different abiotic stress and supervising graduate/undergraduate researchers.
Generally, her research interests focus on the expression of abiotic stress-responsive genes and proteins, physiological and molecular mechanisms of the abiotic stress response, and tolerance. She also studies the effects of organic and inorganic molecules required for plants to coordinate stress responses under various abiotic stresses.