Welcome to our website representing the Plant Biotechnology Lab, at the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Dhaka. Our focus is on producing rice tolerant to saline stress, suitable for growth in the coastal areas of Bangladesh. Any improved rice variety for the coastal region will make major impacts in the livelihoods of the resource-poor farmers of the region, in addition to increasing total rice production, which is important to maintain self-sufficiency in our staple food. Our laboratory has been successful in establishing DNA marker-based breeding for development of salt tolerant strains of rice in collaboration with IRRI. While Bangladesh Rice Research Institute has done the breeding, we have identified suitable progenies having the salt tolerance loci over several generations, and thus helped speed up the breeding process using molecular technologies. In collaboration with IRRI, we are also engaged in characterizing QTLs/genes from salt tolerant rice landraces

In collaboration with ICGEB, New Dehli, we have successfully produced transgenic rice with the Pea Helicase gene which shows enhanced salt tolerance over control. The gene is now being tested for conferment of salt tolerance in farmer popular rice genotypes. Transformation work with transcription factor genes is also in various stages of development. We are also collaborating with ICDDR,B and Stockholm University, in use of Rice to produce recombinant vaccines.