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Sudhir Chandra, Emeritus Professor and Former Head, Department of Botany, University of Allahabad, is well known for his contribution on variuos aspects of Plant Pathology and Agricultural Microbiology. He pioneered the work on Rhizosphere microbiology, Phyllosphere microbiology and Seed pathology and control of plant diseases with homoeopathic drugs and initiated the study of biofertilizers including vesicular arbuscular mycorrhiza, nitrogen fixers and phosphate solubilizing micro-organisms at Allahabad. He developed a numbers of microbial package for improving the productivity in cereals, pulses, medicinal plants, horticultural as well as floricultural crops. He also worked on the role of microbial inoculants in wastelands development and developed packages of microbial inoculants for plantation programmes in a variety of wastelands including silica mining tract, brick fields etc. Research programmes of Professor Chandra have been financed by various Government agencies like UGC, DST, CSIR, ICAR, UPSCST, DOE, and PL480 etc. He is Fellow of Indian Botanical Society, Indian Phytopathological Society, International Society for Conservation of Natural Resources and National Academy of Sciences. He has been Executive member of a number of Societies and Advisor to the Berlin Documentation Project on Research in Homoeopathy, Germany as well as Member, Editorial Board of a number of journals. He has been a reviewer of many journals and research projects. He has written and edited a number of book sand monographs. Prof. Chandra was President IPS, ME Zone in 1992 and was honoured with TERI MEDAL in 1990 and Jeersanidhi award of IPS in 1992. He has trained a number of microbiologist and plant pathologist and authored over 200 research papers/review articles during forty years of his research and teaching career.

Dr. (Ms) H.K. Kehri is a Reader in the Department of Botany, University of Allahabad. She earned her D. Phil. degree from this university under the guidance of Prof. Sudhir Chandra in 1986. Dr. Kehri has earned reputation as scientist because of her important contribution in the field of Rhizosphere microbiology with special reference to dry farming. In the past few years she has done excellent work on VA Mycorrhiza and is training a number of young scientists in the field of VA Mycorrhizae and Soil Microbiology. She has handled a number of independent projects funded by agencies like DST, CSIR and UGC. She has published a number of papers and review articles in journals of repute and is associated with a number of scientific societies. She has edited two books "Microbes and Man" and "Modern Approaches and Innovations in Soil Management". She is a recipient of a number of awards and honours including Silver TERI Medal award in 1992. She has been honoured with fellowship of Indian Phytopathological Society (IPS), International Society for Conservation of Natural Resource (FNRS) and Indian Botanical Society (FBS). For more than a decade she was associated with an International programme of research namely Tropical Soil Biology and Fertility (TSBF) Kenya, during and maintenance of soil fertility through biological means in tropical countries.