Mails-subabul

Brew

Dear Brewbaker,

Let me introduce as Rajkumar, working with Dr. Mohan Varghese in ITC, India. I hope you remember one of our scientists, Dr. Rajeshwari, in Univ. of Hawaii, requesting seed catalogue during 2007. 

Our major mandate of research centers around wood and pulp yield of Leucaena and Eucalyptus, while many farmers life depend on Leucaena in India. We currently sourcing 9,50,000 tonnes of wood from Leucaena and Euca, which are now spread over an area of >90,000 ha and involve >45,000 farmers.

We are new to Leucaena research, and looking at the world for leading research group in this area, we thought, it is worth consulting you/your group.

Our major focus in Leucaena is developing hybrids, producing quality seeds particularly triploids, besides we also work on seed lot evaluation, developing appropriate clonal techniques. Having said that, we have collected germplasm from ICRAF, Kenya, 5 species, (L. trichandra(2x), L.diversifolia (4x), L. esculenta(2x) and L. pallida(4x),  L. leucocephala(2x) and developed sort of hybridization orchard with the assumption to collect triploid seeds. The problems that we faced are

[1] It was hard to achieve synchrony, while staggered sowing did not give us solution due to poor adaptability of certain species
[2] Most seeds collected were turned to be selfed
[3] We don't have much information in self incompatibility or chemically induced male sterility in Leucaena
[4] We are not really sure of the practicality of manual hybridization in Leucaena due to its floral architecture

Despite of we have some good lead on clonal forestry of Leucaena and establishment of elite materials through seed lot evaluation; we still foresee that hybrids would be a vision in future as far as Indian farmers are concerned. 

We do understand that we are handicapped in terms of experience in Leucaena. Therefore, I am sort of expecting your intellectual input, which can be articulated in the form of mutual benefit. Please let us know, how you can help us in our venture. Is it possible for you visit us sometime this year?

Best regards,

Rajkumar
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Research Scientist
ITC Research & Development Centre,
Hyderabad, India

Ph : +91 040 30588065; +91 900 097 7792
FAX: +91 40 30588057
http://www.rajkumar.in
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Ray Ming

"Ray Ming" <rming@life.uiuc.edu>
Dear Ray Ming,


Let me introduce as Rajkumar, admin "CoffeeDNA" database. We met in Trieste, Italy during the first ICGN conference and I hope you remember me.

In last few years, I had been USA, worked in Mimulus genome annotation and map integration program(s) and returned India last year. I joined in a company called ITC (http://www.itcportal.com) and continuing work in bioinformatics and Molecular Biology of Eucalyptus, Tobacco, Casuariana and Subabul. But I am still working with Graziosi, developing and maintaining the coffeeDNA database.

Well, one of my present projects is on Subabul, where in I am looking for expertise like Dr. James L. Brewbaker (Professor of Horticulture and Genetics, University of Hawaii at Manoa), for some intellectual inputs and collaboration. I knew, you have moved out of University of Hawaii, but I guess you may probably be helpful to trace Dr. Brewbaker. I have communicated to <brewbake@hawaii.edu> but I didn't have any response from last 20 days. I am not really sure, if he is still in the University. Can you please suggest me some lights on this?

Thanks and peace

-Raj