Tilak Raj Sharma Biography 
Tilak Raj Sharma, best known as T. R. Sharma is an Indian plant biologist and administrator. He is a recipient of the prestigious Rafi Ahmed Kidwai Award instituted in 1956 by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) to recognize Indian researchers in the agricultural field, and he received the honour in 2011, while serving at National Agri-Food Biotechnology Institute. He currently serves as the executive director of the organization. He is best associated with the research works and studies of genomics and plant disease resistance. He also received National Bioscience Award for Career Development in 2007 and many other honours.
T. R. Sharma was born in 1965 in Hamirpur, Himachal Pradesh. He completed his schooling from Ladrour in 1980. He studied agriculture at Chaudhary Sarwan Kumar Himachal Pradesh Krishi Vishvavidyalaya, and completed his PhD as well. He received the Young Scientist Award of the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences in 1998. He started his career by joining CSK HPKV as an assistant professor in 1991 and was associated with it till 2014. He held the positions of a senior scientist from 1999 to 2007, a principal scientist until 2014 and many other administrative positions within the organization.
As a scientist he worked towards the fields of genomics and plant disease resistance. He also worked on improvising rice crop, research works on diseases like Magnaporthe oryzae affecting the crop and how to block it. He developed new DNA markers - SSR, STMS and SNP and isolated Pi54rh and Pi54of, two new alleles, from wild rice which showed resistance to Magnaporthe oryzae fungus. He currently serves as the chief editor of the Journal of Plant Biochemistry and Biotechnology of Springer Media. He is a life member of several scientific societies including the Biotechnology Society of India, the Society for Plant Biochemistry and Biotechnology etc.
Published: February 27, 2019
Updated: February 27, 2019
