BHU Botanist Shares Crop Protection Insights at International Meet in China

Last week Dr. Surendra Kumar Gond, an associate professor in the Botany Department of Mahila Maha Vidyalaya, Banaras Hindu University, set foot in Kunming, China, for a nine‑day international research conference hosted by Kunming University of Science and Technology.

Between 26 August and 4 September 2026, scholars from China, Brazil and a handful of other nations gathered to untangle the tangled relationships between plants and the microbes that live on or inside them. The theme? How these tiny allies can bolster crop protection and help plants weather drought, salinity and pest attacks.

Dr. Gond took the podium to lay out his latest findings on endophytic bacteria and fungi that not only stimulate growth but also arm crops against disease. He described a series of greenhouse trials where wheat inoculated with a native Bacillus strain showed a 20 % yield boost under low‑phosphorus conditions, and field experiments in Uttar Pradesh where the same microbes reduced rust incidence by nearly a third.

Beyond the formal talk, he spent long hours wandering through the host labs, swapping notes with Chinese microbiologists and Brazilian plant pathologists. Those hallway conversations sparked ideas for joint trials in Brazil’s Cerrado region, where drought tolerance will be put to the test.

The meeting wrapped up with a collective decision to rotate the venue to Brazil for the next edition. Dr. Gond left Kunming hopeful, already sketching a collaborative proposal that could see BHU’s seed bank paired with Brazilian field stations later this year.

Back at BHU, the professor plans to integrate the new insights into his graduate courses and steer his team toward developing microbial consortia that could be rolled out to smallholder farmers across northern India.