Rice Cultivation Under Abiotic Stress: Challenges and Opportunities

Sudhakar Srivastava is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Environment and Sustainable Development (IESD), Banaras Hindu University (BHU), India. He earned his M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Botany from the University of Lucknow and has over 17 years of research experience in plant–metal interactions, with a primary focus on arsenic stress responses in plants. Prior to joining BHU, Dr. Srivastava served as a Scientific Officer at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), Mumbai (2009–2014). He has also held several prestigious postdoctoral positions in Germany, Spain, and India, contributing to his strong international research profile. His research focuses on plant-metal interactions, with a particular emphasis on arsenic stress responses in plants, alongside heavy-metal toxicity, phytoremediation, and sustainable mitigation strategies in crop systems. He has received Young Scientist Awards from the National Academy of Sciences, India (NASI, 2011), the Uttar Pradesh Council of Science and Technology (UPCST, 2013–2014), and the Science and Engineering Research Board (SERB, 2015). He is an Associate of the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (NAAS) and a Fellow of the International Society of Environmental Botanists (ISEB), and he serves on the editorial boards of Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems, the International Journal of Phytoremediation, and Acta Physiologiae Plantarum.

Dr. Kundan Kumar is presently working as an Associate Professor at the Department of Biological Sciences, Birla Institute of Technology & Science Pilani, K. K. Birla Goa Campus. He completed his Ph.D. in Plant Molecular Biology at National Institute of Plant Genome Research, New Delhi, India. He did his post-doctoral studies at University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA and McGill University, Canada from 2009 to 2012. He has more than fifteen years of research experience in the area of Plant Molecular Biology and Stress Physiology. He has published more than 50 publications in International and National Journal of repute. He was recipient of a project under Young Scientist scheme by Department of Science & Technology, India. He is a life member of The Indian Science Congress Association and Society for Plant Biochemistry and Biotechnology. He was a reviewer for various International Journals and serves as an Academic Editor for two International journals, Gene and PLOS One.

Om Parkash Dhankher is a Professor of Crop Biotechnology in the Stockbridge School of Agriculture at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, United States. He earned his PhD in plant molecular biology from Durham University, United Kingdom, on a prestigious Commonwealth Fellowship, and completed postdoctoral studies at the University of Georgia, Athens, United States. With more than 30 years of experience in research, teaching, and administration, and active international collaborations, he has built a multidisciplinary program spanning crop improvement, environmental remediation, and biofuels. Dr. Dhankher was the first to develop a transgenic, plant-based approach to arsenic phytoremediation, combining the expression of two bacterial genes, arsenate reductase (ArsC) and γ-glutamylcysteine synthetase (γECS), in plants, and he characterized the first plant arsenate reductase, AtACR2, from Arabidopsis. His laboratory engineers arsenic-free and arsenic-tolerant food crops to improve human health and manipulates gene networks governing abiotic stress tolerance and glutathione homeostasis to raise crop yields under changing climates. His work has appeared in leading journals, including Nature Biotechnology, PNAS, and The Plant Cell, and has been featured widely in international media, from National Geographic and Reuters to PBS. He is a Fellow of the Crop Science Society of America (CSSA) and the American Society of Agronomy (ASA), as well as the International Society of Environmental Botanists (ISEB) and the Indian Society of Plant Physiology (ISPP), among many other awards and honors.