Vasu Kuraparthy

Bio

Dr. Kuraparthy is a professor and cotton geneticist in the Crop & Soil Sciences department at NCSU. His program has been focused on reducing the genetic vulnerability while improving the productivity and sustainability of cultivated cotton. Dr. Kuraparthy has made outstanding contributions to advance the understanding of cotton genetics, including developing and releasing cotton germplasm lines with improved disease resistance, fiber quality, yield, and leaf shape, flowering time and developing the largest set of publicly available genetic mapping resources for cotton. These efforts have dramatically expanded the cotton genetics knowledge base and identified germplasm, crop traits and genomic tools that are enabling breeders to develop superior, climate-resilient cotton cultivars. Prior to his current role, Dr. Kuraparthy developed strategies to expedite the transfer of alien rust resistance genes, successfully identified, and transferred novel rust resistance genes in wheat.

He regularly engages and communicates with diverse groups of stakeholders including commodity groups, growers, USDA and industry. He teaches advanced plant breeding courses and has successfully mentored numerous graduate students and postdocs. His scientific contributions have been recognized with the Cotton Genetics Research Award by the National Cotton Council of America and U.S. Cotton Industry and the Young Scientist Award by AASIO. Dr. Kuraparthy obtained his PhD and postdoctoral training in Plant Genetics at Kansas State University, USA and M.S in Plant Breeding & Genetics at Punjab Agricultural university and B.S in Agriculture from Acharya N.G. Ranga Agricultural University, India.