Pankaj Bihani's Biography

Pankaj Bihani, Research Scientist, Mahyco Seeds Ltd

Dr. Pankaj R Bihani is a Biotechnology Research Scientist at Mahyco Research Centre (Maharashtra Hybrid Seeds Co. Pvt. Ltd.) since 1998 and leads the ‘Gene Discovery Group’ which is working in the area of development of value added GM crops such as rice, cotton, wheat by testing number of genes for Abiotic Stress Tolerance ( Drought, Salinity and Heat tolerance).

He leads Molecular studies platform in Mahyco, supporting Regulatory group of Mahyco generating molecular data for different transgenic crops such as backbone analysis, copy number detection, event identification, zygosity test development, LOD (Limit Of Detection) PCR. .
Dr. Bihani also leads the ‘Plant Diagnostic’ group at Mahyco. He has developed a substantial Indian market for GMO detection kits under the brand name “DesiGen”, and also developing an export market for the same in South East Asia, South Africa, Serbia, Europe and Indian sub-continent countries.
Dr. Bihani has co authored various publications in peer reviewed journals like ‘Journal of Agricultural Sciences’, Advances in Plant Biotechnology’ and ‘Journal of plant biology’. He also has an international patent to his credit on ‘A method for the preparation of ready-to-use solid support for rapid Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA).
Dr. Bihani is a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Biotechnology from University of Pune where he presented thesis on Cloning and characterization of drought inducible transcription factors from sorghum.