Research statement

Food security, disease prevention/cure, environmental sustainability and space colonization are essential for human survival and advancement. Investigating plants, microbes and their interrelationship is important as they serve as resources for food and medicine besides being the key factors for environmental sustainability. Though plant breeding and genetics have allowed improvement of commercially important traits in plants, most of the improvement have focused on aboveground plant parts. Plant roots provide a large scope for research. Plant roots can significantly contribute to several pertinent areas of research such as abiotic stress management, phytoremediation, nutrient and carbon sequestration, environmental sustainability, space farming and drug discovery. Root-microbe interactions and their role in plant health/immunity and environment are an emerging topic. 

My research utilizes Brassica and Raphanus as experimental candidates to investigate questions related to the abovementioned topics by utilizing a combination of several bioanalytical, microscopic, and molecular techniques. My current research interests includes CBL-CIPK signaling pathway in relation to abiotic stress, DELLA proteins in relation to root growth, Synthetic Microbial Communities (SynComs) in relation to plant health and immunity, phytoremediation, Casparian Strip, P-ring (Acharya & Pesacreta 2023) and culturing bacteria and microalgae in Martian soil.

Besides research and teaching, I like to cook and drive long hours to try new cuisines or coffee.

Selected publications

• Acharya, A., Bellaloui, N., Pilipovic, A., Perez, E., Maddox-Mandolini, M., & Fuente, H. D. L. (2025). Current assessment and future perspectives on phytoremediation of heavy metals. Plants, 14(18), 2847. 

• Sinha, N., Rushing, B. R., Acharya, A., & Ganapathi Shanmugam, S. (2024). Effect of Integrated Crop–Livestock Systems on Soil Properties and Microbial Diversity in Soybean Production. Applied Biosciences, 3(4), 484-502. 

• Acharya, A. (2024). DELLA proteins and CBL-CIPK signaling pathway are emerging players in plant biotechnology. Theoretical and Experimental Plant Physiology, 1-9. 

• Acharya, A., & Pesacreta, T. C. (2023). P-ring: The conserved nature of phosphorus enriched cells in seedling roots of distantly related species. Plant Signaling & Behavior, 18(1), 2217389. 

• Obeidat, S., Ma, J., Himelstein, S., & Acharya, A. (2022, October). The Impact of the Printed Part Geometry on the Shrinkage and Relative Density in Binder Jetting Additive Manufacturing of Ceramics Powder. In ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition (Vol. 86632, p. V02AT02A026). American Society of Mechanical Engineers. 

• Acharya, A., & Pesacreta, T. C. (2022). Localization of seed-derived and externally supplied nutrients in peanut seedling root. Theoretical and Experimental Plant Physiology, 1-15. 

• Pesacreta, T. C., Acharya, A., & Hasenstein, K. H. (2021). Endogenous nutrients are concentrated in specific tissues in the Zea mays seedling. Protoplasma, 258, 863-878. 

• Wang, Y. H., Acharya, A., Burrell, A. M., Klein, R. R., Klein, P. E., & Hasenstein, K. H. (2013). Mapping and candidate genes associated with saccharification yield in sorghum. Genome, 56(11), 659-665.