A second area of our interest is Stress Genomics in plants with specific emphasis to fungal pathogenicity. Plants frequently encounter different biotic stresses that adversely affect growth, development and more importantly the overall productivity. Stress signals perceived by plant cells leads to changes in gene expression profiles that dictate how cells overcome these stresses. Oxalic acid is a potent elicitor in fungal pathogenicity in many crop plants. We have developed fungal resistant transgenic tomato plants that express oxalate decarboxylase. Our current interest is to unravel the role of oxalate decarboxylase in fungal tolerance. In addition, we are identifying resistant gene candidates and defense mechanism of plants in response to fungal wilt. Our laboratory is developing a genome wide transcriptome of legume against Fusarium wilt to study stress perception, differential gene expression and thereby changes in metabolic responses. Our aim is to understand the biological and pathophysiological role of differentially expressed gene/s that control fungal pathogens. The ultimate goal is to use few novel genes for developing transgenic crops with improved fungal tolerance.

A third area of our research is to investigate the regulation of fruit softening using tomato as a model system. We are interested in enhancing shelf-life of fruits and vegetables because delay in fruit softening is the key regulatory mechanism to control their spoilage. Experimental approaches include softening related gene mining and developing knock-out transgenic plants for the candidate genes.

The tools used in our laboratory are molecular biology, biochemistry, Microarray, RNA Seq., Proteomic technology, Computational biology and genetic transformation.