T. R. Sharma

Tilak Raj Sharma (born 20 May 1965) is an Indian plant biologist, the deputy director general (CS) of ICAR and former executive director and chief executive officer of the National Agri-Food Biotechnology Institute (NABI), and Center of Innovative and Applied Bioprocessing (CIAB) respectively, both autonomous institutes under the Department of Biotechnology.

[1] After completing early schooling at the Government High School in Ladrour in 1980, he joined the College of Agriculture of Chaudhary Sarwan Kumar Himachal Pradesh Krishi Vishvavidyalaya (CSK HPKV) from where he earned a BSc in agriculture in 1985, an MSc in 1987 and a PhD in 1990, working on a Dr. K. S. Krishnan fellowship from Bhabha Atomic Research Centre.

[6] Simultaneously, he also serves as the chief executive officer of the Center of Innovative and Applied Bioprocessing (CIAB), another DBT institution in Mohali.

[8] Sharma's research has been focusing the fields of genomics and plant disease resistance and he has worked on the crop improvement of rice.

[5][9] He developed new DNA markers namely SSR, STMS and SNP and isolated Pi54rh and Pi54of, two new alleles, from wild rice which showed resistance to Magnaporthe oryzae.

[19] The award orations delivered by him include the 2016 edition of the Prof MGK Menon Lecture of the National Agri-Food Biotechnology Institute.

[20] Gupta SK, Rai AK, Kanwar SS, Chand D, Singh NK, Sharma TR (2012) The single blast resistance gene Pi54 activates complex defense mechanism in rice.