Research interests:

Our major focus is to clone and characterize abiotic stress-induced genes and promoters from diverse germplasm for deploying them in developing transgenic crop plants tolerant to drought, salinity and high temperature stresses. About 60% of the total cultivated land in our country is affected severely by frequent droughts and related stress factors, and crops suffer heavy yield losses. Transgenics hold a great promise to ameliorate adverse effects of these abiotic stresses as shown internationally in several crops. Here at our Functional Genomics laboratory our focus is to identify genes and promoters that regulate carotenoid biosynthesis in tomato, with particular reference to lycopene. Lycopene is the best known dietary antioxidant, protecting humans from prostrate cancer and other diseases. However, the available Indian tomato cultivars have much less lycopene than the exotic cultivars. Hence, our goal is to develop transgenic tomatoes with high lycopene content and other improved post-harvest characteristics including delayed ripening and extended shelf life.

Selected Publications:

1. Selvi, A., Nair, N. V., Noyer, J. L., Singh, N. K., Balasundaram, N., Bansal, K. C., Koundal, K. R. and Mohapatra, T. (2006). AFLP analysis of the phonetic organization and genetic diversity in the sugarcane complex. Genetic Resources and Crop Evolution 53: 831-842.

2. Selvi, A., Nair, N. V., Noyer, J. L., Singh, N. K., Balasundaram, N., Bansal, K. C., Koundal, K. R. and Mohapatra, T. (2005). Genomic constitution and genetic relationship among the tropical and sub-tropical Indian sugarcane varieties revealed by AFLP. Crop Science 45: 1750-1757.

3. Anjanasree, K. N., Verma, P. K. and Bansal, K. C. (2005). Differential expression of tomato ACC oxidase gene family in relation to fruit ripening. Curr. Science (In press).

4. Anjanasree, K. N., Srivastava, A., Handa, A. and Bansal, K.C. (2005). Identification of differentially expressed ripening-related cDNA clones from tomato using tomato EST array. Curr. Science , 88(5): 1-5.

5. Tayal, D., Srivastava, P. S. and Bansal, K.C. (2004). Transgenic crops for abiotic stress tolerance. In: Plant Biotechnology and Molecular Markers (eds. P.S. Srivasatva, Alka Narula and Sheela Srivastava), Kluwer Academic Publishers, Netherlands, p. 346-365.

6. Anjanasree, K.N. and Bansal, K.C. (2003). Isolation and characterization of ripening-related expansin cDNA from tomato. J. Plant Biochem Biotech 12: 31-35.

7. Barthakur, S., Babu, V. and Bansal K.C. (2001). Over-expression of osmotin induces proline accumulation and confers osmotic stress tolerance in transgenic tobacco. J. Plant Biochem Biotech 10 (1): 31-37.

8. Barthakur, S., Babu, V. and Bansal, K. C. (2000). Bioengineering for reducing post-harvest losses in vegetables crop. In Emerging Scenario in Vegetable Research and Development. (Ed. Kalloo, G. and Singh, Kriti ), Research Periodicals and Book Publishing House, Texas, USA . pp. 96-103.

9. Bansal, K. C. and Bogorad, L. (1993). Cell type-preferred expression of maize cab-ml : Repression in bundle sheath cells and enhancement in mesophyll cells. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., USA 90 : 4057-4061.

10. Bansal, K. C., Viret, J. F., Haley, J., Khan, B. M., Schantz, R. and Bogorad, L. (1992). Transient expression from cab ml and rbc S-m3 promoter sequences is different in mesophyll and bundle sheath cells in maize leaves. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci., USA 89 : 3654-3658.

    Email: kailashbansal@hotmail.com