UP Council of Sugarcane Research, UP, India.

Dr. Madan Lal is presently working as a Scientific Officer and Head, Tissue Culture Division, U.P. Council of Sugarcane Research, Shahjahanpur, India. Dr Lal has an experience of over 28 years of research in the fields of plant morphogenesis and tissue culture. After post graduation in Botany in 1982, he worked for his Ph.D. with Professor (Late) V.S. Jaiswal, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi. He has made several contributions on in vitro culture of sugarcane. Rapid multiplication of newly released varieties of sugarcane through in vitro micropropagation and sugarcane improvement through somaclonal variation has been his main fields of interest.

With a view to reduce the cost of micropropagated plants, he has developed low cost protocols for efficient micropropagation of several varieties of sugarcane. He has also worked on some biochemical and molecular changes taking place during in vitro morphogenesis in several plants. He has successfully encapsulated the somatic embryos and young meristems of sugarcane and achieved germination of artificial seeds in vitro. Numerous field demonstrations using micropropagated plantlets of sugarcane had been conducted by him at the farms of UPCSR, cane growers and sugar factories of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar to motivate them for adopting the micropropagated seed material of sugarcane. Dr. Lal has published over 70 research papers in Indian and International journals. He has also published a book entitled ‘Tissue Culture Based Sugarcane Farming’ to his credit.