Indian Floriculture in the New Millennium

Dr. R.L. Misra was born on 15th May, 1946 in a village in Pratapgarh district of U.P. In recognition of his expertise and hard work he got selected for the post of Principal Scientist in the Division of Floriculture & Landscaping, IARI, New Delhi – 110012. Having specialization in Floriculture both at M.Sc as well as Ph.D. level he worked all through on flowers and has vast experience of over 34 years working in the hills as well as in the plains, and dealing with almost all the commonly grown flowers. He is a well renowned floriculture scientist whose work on gladiolus is acclaimed worldwide. He developed 23 gladiolus varieties/hybrids, as many more hybrids are under pre-release testing. HE has been associated with all the seven P.G. Courses on Floriculture in the discipline of Horticulture in IARI, New Delhi. Four M.Sc. and 7 Ph.D. students got their Degrees under his chairmanship on various aspects of floriculture and landscaping, and 5 students are working under him at present for their degrees. He has been on Advisory Committees of many students of other disciplines. To his credit, he has 290 publications (research 135, symposium papers 53, review articles 13 and popular articles 89) in national and international journals, in addition to two books and 38 book chapters / bulletins / leaflets. Apart from being an active and dedicated scientist and teacher in floriculture, he has been also committed and dedicated in running the Journal of Ornamental Horticulture for the last 10 years (10 volumes) i.e. from second issue of volume * (1993) to New Series Vo. V (2002). Dr. Misra designed and edited the journal and proceedings of Abstracts of both the symposia held inj 1999 and 2002. In the recent past, he was made officer-in-charge of Indo-Israel Project on Hi-Tech Horticulture to revamp its functioning.