Hereditary Genetics: Current Research

Sukumar Saha

Sukumar Saha
Professor
Mississippi State University, USA

Biography

Dr. Sukumar Saha is a Research Geneticist (GS-15) in the Genetic and Precision Research Unit, Crop Science Research Laboratory, Mississippi State, MS.   He has a total of thirty five years of professional research experience.  After working as a Research Assistant Professor for five years at Alabama A&M University the incumbent assumed the present position with USDA/ARS in 1997.  He demonstrated outstanding stature and received significant recognition as an international authority in cotton genomics and cytogenetics for the development of genetic and cytogenetic resources that are being used by the scientists in the USA and around the world.  He was awarded the 2010 Cotton Geneticist award from the National Cotton Council and ICAC Cotton Researcher of the year 2011 award from International Cotton Advisory Committee because of the impact of his outstanding research in cotton communities.  He made several pioneering discoveries such as:  1) discovering a strategy for detection of SNP-markers associated with candidate genes in tetraploid cotton; 2) developing for the first time large number of PCR-based EST-SSR markers using a novel cost-effective data-mining strategy from the publicly available cotton EST database; 3) identification of the SSR markers (>50) linked to important traits and their chromosomal locations; 4) identification of the first biochemical marker in cotton; 5) use of association mapping strategy to detect for the first time genome wide linkage disequilibrium value in cotton genome; 6) discovering that cotton fiber cells can undergo cell division, changing a dogma in cotton science; 7) releasing a unique set of interspecific backcrossed tetraploid chromosome substitution lines of G. barbadense (CS-B); 8) developing for the first time a unique set of aneuploid chromosome substitution lines for different chromosome of G. tomentosum in Upland cotton; and, 9) demonstrating the importance of the CS-B lines in the improvement of Upland cultivars. He also worked as an agricultural extension worker for eight years with farmers in India before immigrating to the US.

Research Interest

Genetics and Cyto genetics