Prof. Rajeev Varshney, an agricultural scientist specializing in genomics, crop breeding, seeds system and capacity building, is currently serving ICRISAT as a Research Program Director- Accelerated Crop Improvement and Murdoch University (Australia) as International Chair in Agriculture & Food Security. 

Prof. Varshney is a globally recognized leader for his work on genome sequencing, genomics-assisted breeding, seed system and capacity building in developing countries in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. He has made centrally important contributions towards improving food and nutrition security in India and several countries in Africa and Asia by assembling genomes of ten major “orphan” tropical crops and other key genomic resources in pigeonpea, chickpea, groundnut and pearl millet. He has developed and integrated genomic technologies in crop improvement programs that have already delivered 11 superior crop varieties to some of the world’s poorest farmers.  

Prof. Varshney, a highly prolific author and Highly Cited Researcher for 8 consecutive years (2014-2021) in a row has published >500 papers in high impact factor journals including 19 papers in various Nature journals. Based on his publications, he has h-Index of 108 with >47,000 citations. He is the youngest agricultural/plant scientist and 4th Indian to achieve an h-index of >100 as per Google Scholar. He is editor of 16 books from Springer, CRC Publishers, etc. He is an elected fellow to about 10 science and agriculture academies/ societies in India, Germany, USA, etc. and recipient of several noted awards including the most coveted science award, Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize, and the most prestigious agricultural science award, Rafi Ahmed Kidwai Award from Government of India. Recently ICRISAT won the 2021- Africa Food Prize for the outputs and impact of Tropical Legume projects, led by Prof Varshney as Principal Investigator for 7 years, in 13 countries in Africa and 2 countries in Asia.