Vishal Kothari

Dr. Vishal Kothari

Ph.D. (Biotechnology), M.Phil. (Bioinformatics)

I have worked on agri-informatics (“Bioinformatics driven biotic factor analysis of agro-ecosystems” at Gujarat State Biotechnology Mission (GSBTM), Gandhinagar (Gujarat). Here we developed a Decision Support System (DSS) for crop selection and prediction of crop production on the basis of biotic and abiotic parameters combining data from the last 10 years provided by the government of Gujarat (India), 2010.

My Phd thesis was focussed on “Plant Growth Promoting Rhizobacteria; Microbiology and Formulation,” at Saurashtra University, Rajkot (Gujarat). I isolated the microbes from the rhizosphere around the cumin plant to find bio controlling microbes bacillus safensis with ACC deaminase activity which is critical for plants during drought conditions. For the first time, we also performed a whole genome sequence analysis for the same strain and mined genome data for the other PGPR activity. Another biocontrol strain of genus Bacillus was used to find out the compound responsible for the antifungal activity; various formulations were prepared to check long-term stability and to evaluate their PGPR activity, 2014.

As a postdoctoral researcher at Junagadh Agricultural University, my main focus was in genomics, metagenomics, and proteomics for strain improvement in crop production. Here, I completed five fungal genomes, 12 bacterial genomes, and many SRAs that were deposited at NCBI; 2014-2021.

Achievements:

Young Scientist in Biotechnology and Gold medallist, 12+ Year Experience of lead research team on Plant Growth Promoting Rhizobacteria; Microbiology and Formulation.