M.T. Vinayan has been working with P.H. Zaidi at CIMMYT-Asia, Hyderabad, and was recently awarded the 2011 gold medal for the āBest PhD student in Plant Breeding and Geneticsā from Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU), India. During the ceremony on 23 November 2011, Vinayan was also presented with the āDr. R. Appadurai, Dr. R Rathinasamy, and Dr. S. Kannaiyan Awardā by the Governor of Tamil Nadu, K. Rosaiah. Vinayan conducted his thesis on āGenetic architecture of spotted stem borer resistance in sorghum as inferred from QTL mapping and synteny with the maize genomeā under the guidance of C.T. Hash (Principal Scientist, ICRISAT) and K. Mohanasundaram (TNAU).
At the 11th Asian Maize Conference, Jewel Jameeta Noor, a CSISA PhD student, won a āBest Paperā award for her submission on āMorpho-physiological traits associated with heat stress tolerance in tropical maize (Zea mays L.), co-authored by P.H. Zaidi, Shahid Umar, M.T. Vinayan, and Pooja Devi. Noor is currently studying at Jamia Hamdard, New Delhi, under P.H. Zaidi, Senior Maize Physiologist, Global Maize Program, CIMMYT.
Congratulations to everyone involved for all their efforts!
