International Conference on IUBS project: “Environmental Education and Climate Change Adaptation: Science of Pollution tolerant and Climate Resilient Plants”

ISEB and CSIR-NBRI jointly organised lectures on March 29, 2023

The participants of the meeting were Prof. S. K. Barik, Prof. R.P. Singh, Dr. P.A. Shirke, Dr. R.D. Tripathi, Dr. Nandita Singh, Dr. Vivek Pandey, Dr. S. K Tewari, Dr. Pankaj Srivastava, Dr. Soumit Behera, Dr. Dibyendu Adhikari, Dr. S.K. Rath, Dr. Richa Rai, Dr. Anju Patel, Dr. Sandeep Behera, Dr. Sanjay Dwivedi, and Dr. Geet Govind Sinam were there physically. Prof. P.V. Vara Prasad (India), Prof. A.S. Raghvendra (India), Prof. Mirza Hassanuzam (Bangladesh), Prof. Xinli Wei (China), Prof. Shanti S. Sharma (India), Prof. Arunachalam (India), Prof. Pramod Tandon (India), Prof. Daizy Rani Batish (India) and Dr. Sudhakar Srivastava (India) joined virtually. Prof Elina Oksanen (Finland) was not able to join due to some technical difficulty. Student participants were Ms. Mithlesh Bhardwaj, Ms Pragya, Ms. Vartika, Dr. Sandhya, Mr. Sampoorna Nand, Mr. Abhinandan Yadav, Dr. Reshu, Dr. Surabhi, Mr. Vishnu, Mr. Sarvesh and Dr. Poonam. Total there were total 46 participants.

Prof. S.K. Barik, President ISEB welcomed all the invitees, participants, resource persons, steering and committee members. He briefed about the activities of the project, addressed about significance and progress of the project, and also about the “Training manual” prepared under this project. He also emphasized testing the methods across the globe which will help to identify suitable ones.

Director, CSIR-NBRI, Dr. Ajit Kumar Shasany gave the opening remarks stating the importance of climate change and climate resilient traits in plants. He also highlighted the importance of developing a method or model to address climate change. He emphasized the need of such a project in the era of climate change. He also welcomed all the participants and invitees.

Dr. Vivek Pandey, Chief Scientist and Joint Secretary ISEB, presented the IUBS project report where he told about the different activities conducted under the project (i) ISEB-IUBS Initiation Project workshop on “Methods Manual” which was held on 28 December 2020 in which all the project partners participated, then he informed about (ii) Workshop on “Air Pollution and Climate Change” held on 21st October, 2021 and in collaboration with NIDM, New Delhi. Speakers of the workshops were Prof S.P.S Kushwaha and Prof. Madhoolika Agrawal and about 200 participants which included students, teachers, scientists, and technocrats participated in the workshop. He showcased the last important activity which was on conducting a country-level capacity building and training workshop on October 20-21, 2022. He informed that 95 faculties from different universities and colleges and research students participated out of which 46 were Young scientists and 39 were Women. Participants were given hands-on training in the methods, outlined in the ‘Manual of Methods’ prepared under the project and they visited FACE/FATE facility.

After this, Prof. P.V. Vara Prasad from the Department of Agronomy, Kansas State University, USA delivered a lecture entitled “Climate Stresses (Heat and Drought): Sensitive stages, Impacts, Mechanisms, Management and Breeding” in which he highlighted the impact of heat and drought stress on agricultural crops, an thesis/flowering as the most sensitive phase to heat stress which would impact on the productivity of the crops and legumes and pearl millet to be tolerant to heat stress He also highlighted different tools which could be employed for identifying heat and drought tolerance. In his lecture, he also informed us about different mitigation strategies to combat heat and drought stress.

Prof. Shanti S. Sharma, Sikkim University, India appreciated the reliable markers and simple methods chosen in the manual for the identification of pollution-tolerant and climate-resilient crops. He suggested to include the tetrazolium test for seed viability test in the manual.

Prof. Pramod Tandon, Former Vice Chancellor, North Eastern Hill University, Shillong emphasized on the usefulness of the Manual of Methods for validation of air pollution tolerant and climate resilient plants for undergraduate and research students.

Dr. A. Arunachalam, Director, ICAR-CAFRI, Jhansi, India congratulated the team for the identification of simple and robust methods for the identification of pollution tolerance and climate change resilient.

Prof A.S Raghvendra, University of Hyderabad, India delivered a lecture on “Plant Metabolism and Diversity under Global Climate Change: Selected Observations” climate change and in this, he highlighted about causes of climate change, the effects of climate change on agriculture crops, biodiversity and on different biochemical processes in plants, about variation in primary and secondary metabolites and the effect of climate change on volatile emissions from plants and its implication on ecosystem, affecting plant-pollinator interactions.

Prof. Xinli Wei, State Key Laboratory of Mycology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China,

delivered a lecture on “Lichen and desertification” in which she highlighted about her findings of 100 lichen species in Chinese dessert, its vertical niches affect the community composition most of bacteria and fungi. She discussed about the application of lichen resistance genes. She showed transgenic plant of (Medicago sativa and Agrostis) EpTFIIA from lichen Endocarpon developed drought resilience. She highlighted about the workshop executed by her on “the mechanism of arid tolerance undertaken by plants and plant-associated lichens”

Prof Mirza Hassanuzaman, Department of Agronomy, Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University, Bangladesh highlighted about his activities initiated for this project like Training workshop on research methodology and scientific writing on plant and environmental science and pollution research on 7-10 July 2020 and a Seminar on the “Effect of Climate Change and Environmental Pollution on Agriculture” on 14 September 2022 and in which they engaged large number of students.

After the presentations the meeting was open for discussion for future road map of the project.

In the end, Dr. R.D Tripathi, Secretary ISEB proposed the vote of thanks.

IUBS Training Manual:

A Training Manual entitled “Environmental Education and Climate Change Adaptation: Science of Pollution Tolerant and Climate Resilient Plants” prepared under IUBS sponsored project was released by Prof. S.K. Barik, Dr. Ajit Kumar Shasany, Dr. R.D. Tripathi, Dr. Nandita Singh and Dr. Vivek Pandey.

Manual release: From left: Prof S.K. Barik, Dr. A.K. Shasany, Dr. Vivek Pandey, Dr. R.D. Tripathi, Dr. Nandita

One of the major objectives of the Project was the preparation of a training manual for the training workshops. With the inputs of all the partners the Manual is ready and had been used in the First Country Level Training Workshop in India, organized by International Society of Environmental Botanists (ISEB) & CSIR-National Botanical Research Institute, Lucknow, India on October 20 and 21, 2022, involving University/College Science teachers and researchers.

IUBS manual is divided into two parts and has 8 chapters:

Part 1: Pollution Tolerance in plants, having 4 chapters

Chapter 1: Sulphur Dioxide

Chapter 2: Oxides of Nitrogen

Chapter 3: Suspended Particulate Matter

Chapter 4: Toropospheric Ozone

Part 2: Adaptation to Climate Change in Plants, having 4 chapters

Chapter 5: Drought tolerance in plants

Chapter 6: Tolerance in plants to rising temperature

Chapter 7: Plant responses to elevated CO₂

Chapter 8: Developing Air pollution/climate change Tolerance Indices

Chapter 1-7 give a short introduction about the pollution and its sources, which is followed by the responses of plants to that pollutant, particularly at the morphological, visible symptoms and biochemical changes. The next and important section is the responsive parameters of the pollutant and the estimation of those parameters in simple way which are feasible to assay by undergraduate and graduate students in their college laboratories.

Chapter 8 is a presentation on development of Pollution/climate change tolerance index. The present chapter aims to develop air pollutant/climate indices based on biochemical, physiological and morphological tolerance/sensitivity parameters. Since the screening of plants has to be done in different phytogeographic regions of the world involving the college teachers/students, it is required to identify only such crucial parameters for the indices that require minimum instrumentation and cost and can be easily performed by the school and college students.

MANUAL

SUGGESTIONS ON THE PROJECT

Prof R. P. Singh, Department of Environmental Science, BBAU, India gave inputs to address the complexities that occur in ecosystems to address climate change, he also emphasized increasing above and below-ground biodiversity and to create resilient ecosystems.
Dr Pankaj Kumar Srivastava, Senior Principal Scientist, CSIR-NBRI, proposed the use of robust data and validate the index and use of Environmental Information Awareness and Capacity Building and Livelihood Programme (EIACP) platform to broaden the activities to screen the plants and methods.
Dr Dibyendu Adhikari, Principal Scientist, CSIR-NBRI, suggested about the involvement of citizens as a volunteer to screen and validate the methods.
Dr. Sandeep Behera, Senior Scientist, CSIR-NBRI suggested the role of Pteridophytes in mitigating pollution.
Dr. Richa Rai, Senior Scientist, CSIR-NBRI suggested validating the newly developed index across all phytogeographical zones of India to generate more robust data.
Dr. Anju Patel, Scientist, CSIR-NBRI proposed to use “Jigyasa” platform (Indian Government student-scientist connect program) which involves School children for Environmental Education
Dr. Pramod Tandon and Dr. A.S Raghvendra also highlighted about validation of methods and to explore the unexplored areas for the identification of resilient plants and to look for existing biodiversity and wild relatives to mitigate climate change. Prof. Mirza Hassanuzaman emphasized on publishing the information so that it may be disseminated on a wider scale.

STEERING COMMITTEE MEMBERS COMMENT

Dr Soumit Behera, Senior Principal Scientist, CSIR-NBRI, Lucknow, suggested to include ecosystem services. Dr P.A. Shirke, Chief Scientist, CSIR-NBRI, India suggested that due to urban expansion and less availability of space for plantations it is important to develop ecosystem types that include lower to higher groups. He also emphasized on environmental education and students to participate and create awareness about environmental problems.
Dr. Sudhakar Srivastava, Assistant Professor, Institute of Environment & Sustainable Development, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, commented that the project objectives are pertinent in today's environment of the world with respect to understanding and planning for agricultural sustainability, biodiversity conservation and environmental protection along with inclusion of people spanning social perspectives of various problems. The project included people from University to colleges and published a useful manual for utilization in achieving broader objectives in the interest of environmental sustainability and firmly believed that the project should be continued and extended to a wider scale in the future with participation of more Institutes and organizations from the country and also with the inclusion of more countries representing different parts of the world in the project.

Way Forward:

We need to validate the methods mentioned in the Manual for identification of the pollution tolerant and climate resilient plants across different phytogeographical areas of the world. We also need to investigate the unexplored areas for the identification of pollution tolerant and climate resilient plants. There is a necessity to explore the existing biodiversity to identify wild relatives of plants to mitigate climate change impacts.

Nationalities and names of people participating in the project:

Project Leaders

Dr. N.K. Agrawal, Nepal
Dr. María de los Angeles Herrera Campos, Mexico
Juan Pablo Suárez Chacón, Ecuador
Prof. O.P. Dhankher, USA
Prof. P.K. Diwakar, Spain
Prof. Mirza Hasanuzzaman, Bangladesh
Prof. Elina Oksanen, Finland
Prof. A.S. Raghavendra, India
Dr. Somidh Saha, Germany
Dr. Xinli Wei, China
Prof. Thorsten Lumbsch, USA

Project Leaders from CSIR-NBRI and ISEB, India

Prof S.K. Barik, Director CSIR-NBRI and President, ISEB
Dr. R.D. Tripathi, Secretary, ISEB
Dr. Nandita Singh, Additional Secretary, ISEB
Dr. Vivek Pandey, Joint Secretary, ISEB

Other participants from CSIR-NBRI

Dr. P.A. Shirke, CSIR-NBRI
Dr. P.K. Srivastava, CSIR-NBRI
Dr. Shekhar Mallick, CSIR-NBRI
Dr. Dibyendu Adhikari, CSIR-NBRI
Dr. Soumit Kumar Behera, CSIR-NBRI
Dr. Richa Rai, CSIR-NBRI
Dr. Anju Patel, CSIR-NBRI
Dr. Sanjay Dwivedi, CSIR-NBRI

Advisors

Dr. P.V. Sane, Lucknow
Prof. R.P. Singh, BBAU, Lucknow
Prof. S.S. Sharma, Sikkim Central University, Sikkim
Dr. D.C. Uprety, IARI, New Delhi
Prof. M.K. Datta, APJ Abdul
Kalam Technical University, Lucknow
Dr. P.V. Vara Prasad, Kansas State University, USA
Prof. Renee Borges, National Chair of IUBS in India from INSA, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore

Glimpses of the International Conference

IUBS International Level Workshop