PROJECT CORE MEMBERS
Dr. Ram Bahadur Khadka received BS in agriculture in 2007 and MS in agriculture with Plant Pathology from Tribhuvan University, Institute of Agricultural and Animal Sciences, Rampur in 2009 and completed PhD in Plant Pathology at The Ohio State University - Department of Plant Pathology under Dr. Sally Miller's supervision. Currently, he is working as a Scientist at Nepal Agricultural Research Council (NARC) – National Plant Pathology Research Center, Lalitpur, Nepal. His research programs include basic and applied aspects of plant pathology with the aim to improve national capacity in plant disease management. He uses various conventional, omics, and machine learning tools to detect diseases, characterize pathogens, predict and forecast diseases; and develop strategies to manage them in a sustainable manner. His major specializations include soilborne diseases, diagnosing pathogens, and forecasting plant diseases. Ram will lead the overall implementation of the project in Nepal including supervision of MS and PhD students, run metagenomic study, organizing meetings, and workshops, and coordinating and collaborating with different stakeholders in project implementation. Ram's lab website https://sites.google.com/view/molecularplantpathologylab/home?pli=1
Dr. Ranjana Rawal is a Scientist at NARC-National Horticultural Research Center. She received BS in agriculture in 2009 and MS in agriculture with Horticulture from Tribhuvan University, Rampur in 2011 and completed PhD in Horticulture and Crop Sciences at The Ohio State University under the joint supervision of Dr. Soledad Benitez Ponce and Dr. Joseph Scheerens. She evaluated the native Nepalese Trichoderma in alleviating water deficit stress in tomato genotypes using varieties of phenomic, genomics and metabolomics tools in her PhD 53 . She was also a recipient of the prestigious Faculty for the Future Fellowship between 2017-2021 from Schlumberger Foundation. Ranjana also worked as a Cropping System Agronomist in The International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) for Cereal Systems Initiative for South Asia (CSISA) project where she led to implementation of 100s of participatory trials in farmers' fields at Mid-Western Nepal. Ranjana will serve as a CO-PI and will serve as an advisor for students and support in participatory action trials, analyzing microbiome data in Nepal, and execution of the experiments in grafting in tomato and peppers.
Suraj Baidya is a Senior Scientist and Chief of the NARC-National Plant Pathology Research Center. He is a nematologist by training. He graduated from Ghent University, Belgium in 2006. He has longer than 20 years of research career in Plant Pathology. Suraj will guide and support the project team in implementation, quality checks, monitoring and evaluation. He will also guide to preparing protocols, and implementation plans in root-knot nematode experiments, 29 soil sampling, nematode extraction, quantification and species identification. Suraj will also play as a resource person for workshop and training programs organized under the project.
Dr. Kariki is a food scientist from Nepal working as a researcher at Nepal Agricultural Research Council for the past 18 years in post-harvest processing and analytics, cost effective value addition, and the development of new varieties of agricultural commodities. Dr. Karki completed Ph.D. at the University of Otago, New Zealand. I worked on the application of 28 Pulsed Electric Fields (PEF) and Sous vide (SV) processing to enhance the quality of beef meat, funded by the Government of New Zealand under the Food Industry Enabling Technologies (FIET) program. Dr. Karki is interested in applying food science to solve real problems of farmers, food processors, and entrepreneurs to enhance their income and to utilize and commercialize indigenous agricultural resources sustainably. Dr.Karki is trained as a post-harvest engineer from Katholieke Universiteit (KU) Leuven, Belgium under VLIR-UOS Scholarship, 2007-2009 as a top 5% student. He got skills and knowledge of PEF and SV processing, value addition and product development technologies, analysis of nutritional and bioactive properties, advanced chromatographic techniques, optimization techniques, and multivariate and other statistical analyses. Currently, Roman is leading the National Food Research Centre affiliated with the Nepal Agricultural Research Council. Roman will lead the analysis of fruit quality parameters in tomatoes and sweet peppers.
Dr. Shrestha completed Bachelor in Agricultural Sciences in 2006 Himalayan College of Agricultural Science & Technology (HICAST), Nepal and Master in Agricultural Sciences and Resource Management in the Tropics and Subtropics (ARTS) major in soil science University of Bonn, Germany in 2011. She accomplished her Ph.D. in soil science in 2020 at Center for Development Research, (Plant nutrition department) University of Bonn -under Prof. Mathias Becker's supervision as a DAAD scholar. Since 2012, she is working as a Soil Scientist at Nepal Agricultural Research Council (NARC) – National Soil Science Research Center, Lalitpur, Nepal. Her research focus on supply-demand synchrony in nutrients (more focus zinc micronutrients) and management of vegetable, fruit and legume crops. She is working on sitespecific nutrient management as well as optimum use of fertilizer management for increasing crop productivity. She supervises more than 10 master's and bachelor's soil science students also collaborate with different stakeholder for soil fertility management. She has published more than 20 soil-related publications in peer review journals including scientific conferences. Shova will lead in monitoring soil quality parameters in experiments.
Mr. Subedi is working as a Scientist (Agricultural economist) at NARC-National Agricultural Policy Research Center, since 2015. Mr. Subedi is also working as an Adjunct Assoc. Prof. at Himalayan College of Agricultural Sciences and Technology, Nepal where he is teaching several courses in agricultural economics and supervising the MS thesis research. Before joining NARC, he had worked as a “District Agriculture Officer” in a USAID-funded project “Suaahara” at Helen Keller International (HKI). Mr. Subedi had completed his Bachelor’s (Agricultural Science) and Master’s degree (Agricultural Economics) from Tribhuvan University, Nepal. His studies are mainly focused on adoption and impact of improved agricultural technology, economics of production and marketing of agricultural commodities, technical and resource use efficiency of the farmers and agricultural insurance. Mr. Subedi will take lead to assess the factors affecting the technology adoption, cost-benefit analysis and outcome mapping.
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