Welcome to our website for a glimpse of the kind of work we do at 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. There will be a predicted decrease of 15.6% in rice production due to rising salinity in the 9 upazilas of the coast, while at the same time the population of Bangladesh will increase from 170 to 214 million by 2050.
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 (BRRI) did the breeding, we identified suitable progenies having the salt tolerance loci over several generations,
