Plant Hormones in Crop Improvement

Dr. M. Iqbal R. Khan currently holds the position of Assistant Professor at the Department of Botany, and Deputy Director of The Centre for Environment and Sustainable Development (CESD), Jamia Hamdard, New Delhi. Also, an Adjunct Professor at the Korea University, Seoul, South Korea and Adjunct Associate Professor at The University of Western Australia, Perth, Australia. Exposure of agricultural crops to environmental stress–induced adversities pose a serious threat to global food and nutritional security. Dr. Khan research has primarily focused on major staple crops, particularly wheat, with the objective of reducing their susceptibility to environmental stress under projected future climatic pressures and contributing toward the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Dr. Khan has published more than 100 articles, edited 11 Books, and authored 14 Book Chapters in reputed Publishers. He has an h-index of 57 and i10-index of 98, with more than 14600 citations to his credit as per Google Scholar as per bibliometric data in Jan 2026. He has been recognized as Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher in Animal and Plant Science category and is in the list of Top 2% Scientists (Elsevier) of the World (2021-2025). Dr. Khan has been awarded with The National Academy of Sciences (NASI) - Membership in Plant and Agricultural Sciences (2024), and recipient of Indian National Science Academy (INSA) Young Associates (2024). Further, his work has attracted prestigious awards, including R.H. Dastur Gold Medal Award-ISPP (2023), Young Scientist Platinum Jubilee Award-NASI (2021), and Young Scientist Award-ISPP (2018). He is on the Editorial Board of many renowned journals as the Section Editor in Plant and Soil, Associate Editor in Journal of Plant Growth Regulation, 3-Biotech, and Plant Physiology Reports. Also served as Guest Editor in the Agriculture, Frontiers in Plant Science, Sustainability and Plant Physiology and Biochemistry.Dr. Amarjeet Singh is a scientist and faculty member at the National Institute of Plant Genome Research (NIPGR), New Delhi, INDIA. After obtaining his doctoral degree from University of Delhi, INDIA, he did post-doctoral research at Washington State University, Pullman, USA. His research has provided crucial resources and insights for functional genomic studies in important crop plants such as rice and chickpea. The focus of his research has been the understanding of molecular and functional behaviour of important abiotic stress, hormone and development signalling genes, including protein phosphatases, kinases, calcium transporters and phospholipases. At NIPGR major research focus of the group is to understand the molecular mechanism of nutrient (N P, K) uptake, transport and homeostasis and improving nutrient use efficiency (NUE) in crop plants rice and chickpea. Emphasis is majorly on modulation of root system architecture and genetic manipulation of nutrient transporter and their regulatory proteins. This effort would help in generating crop plants with better NUE, consequently, will result in minimal use of very expensive and polluting chemical fertilizers in agriculture system.Dr. Singh has published about 30 research/review articles in highly reputed, peer-reviewed international journals. Also, he has co-edited a book, and published about 10 book chapters with noted book publishers. For his significant contribution in the field of plant sciences and agriculture, he was selected for the prestigious Membership of National Academy of Sciences (NASI), the oldest science academy in India. He was also awarded the coveted Young Scientist Platinum Jubilee Award (2017) from NASI and Pran Vohra Award (2018-19) from the Indian Science Congress Association (ISCA). He is also conferred with several national and international awards and fellowships during his Ph.D. and post-doctoral research, including SERB-DST Young Scientist award, Young Investigator Award-DBT, D.S. Kothari Post-doctoral Fellowship, Travel Award by American Society of Plant Biologists (ASPB), USA, Travel Award by CSIR-India. He has served as reviewer for several prestigious international journals, such as Plant Cell Reports, Biotechnology and Bioengineering, PLoS ONE, Plant Molecular Biology, Frontiers in Plant Science, Plant Molecular Biology Reporter, Acta Physiologiae Plantarum, Scientific reports, Plant Physiology and Biochemistry and Journal of Plant Growth Regulation. Dr. Péter Poór is an assistant professor, who has been leading the Plant Stress Physiology and Photosynthesis Research Group at the Department of Plant Biology of the University of Szeged, Hungary since 2017. His main research area is the investigation of plant defense hormones, and a better understanding of plant defense mechanisms, especially in the dark. As a result of his work, he has published more than 80 international scientific publications to date, to which he has received more than 1,000 citations. In addition to his research work, he participates in the lecturer activities of the Department of Plant Biology, including the teaching of plant cell biology, plant anatomy, photosynthesis, and plant stress physiology. His teaching activities were twice recognized with the Golden Chalk Award based on student votes. In addition, he is an active organizer of university public life, as well as takes part in a wide range of scientific dissemination activities and science organization activities. He is the secretary of the Hungarian Free Radical Research Society and a member of the Hungarian Plant Biology Society. He is also a member of the editorial boards of several international journals (e.g. Frontiers in Plant Science, Journal of Plant Growth Regulation). In 2019, he won the János Bolyai Research Scholarship of the Hungarian Science Academy. In 2018, he received the first prize in the Lecture Series of Young Plant Biologists of the Hungarian Plant Biology Society.

• 1. Regulatory role of phytohormones in plant growth and development2. Deciphering the physiological and molecular functions of phytohormones3. Regulatory role of phytohormones in plant interaction with insect herbivores4. Role of phytohormones in regulating agronomically important seed traits in crop plants5. Phytohormone signaling in osmotic stress response 6. Role of phytohormones in plant response to drought and salinity stresses7. Regulation of plants nutrient deficiency responses by phytohormones8. Extended role of auxin: reconciliation of growth and defence responses under biotic stress 9. Jasmonic acid biosynthesis pathway and its functional role in plants10. Brassinosteroids in plant growth and development 11. Understanding the role of phytohormones in governing heat, cold and freezing stress response12. Drought-induced plant miRNAome and phytohormone signaling crosstalk13. Interaction between the key defence-related phytohormones and polyamines in crops 14. Interplay between phytohormones and hydrogen sulfide regulates plant growth and development under normal and abiotic stresses 15. Emerging trends in plant metabolomics and hormonomicsto study abiotic stress tolerance associated with rhizospheric probiotics 16. The main fungal pathogens and defence-related hormonal signalling in crops