Dnyaneshwar Bandu Deshmukh work in oilseeds breeding, with a focus on groundnut and sesame. He has over seven years in professional experience in the seed industry working on tomato at Bayer Crop Science and Oilseeds Breeding at DCM Shriram. His work focuses on accelerated breeding of groundnut and sesame using modern tools and multi-location testing, and close collaboration with partners. He has developed and worked on advance breeding populations using modern tools such as genomic prediction, speed breeding, high‑throughput phenotyping, CT‑scan and NIRS‑based nutritional quality analysis, and ensure robust multi‑environment testing and data‑driven advancement. He was involved in developing and standardizing breeding and testing protocols. These include growing degree-day based maturity assessment, detached leaf assay for disease screening, seed-chip based genotyping, NIRS calibration for kernel quality traits, and blanchability testing. These activities support the development of market-oriented groundnut breeding lines.
Mr Deshmukh also focus on improving breeding operations and product supply. His experience includes continuous process improvement, quality management, health, safety and compliance standards, and auditor under internationally recognized standards, and auditing under recognized systems such as ISO 17025, ISO 14001, ISO 45001 and BIS. I also support NARS partners through capacity building in breeding and testing, joint development of improved oilseed varieties, and sharing the breeding material with NARS for research and development. He received the Bayer Crop Science Team Gold Award in 2024 for my contribution in Seed Production Innovations.
Mr Deshmukh hold a PhD in Agriculture with a specialization in Molecular Breeding from Professor Jayashankar Telangana Agricultural University, Hyderabad. His doctoral research work was carried out at ICRISAT and focused on Molecular breeding for improvement of foliar fungal disease resistance and oil quality in groundnut. His research received the Best Oral Presentation Award at the conference ‘Enhancing the productivity of oilseeds in changing climate scenario’ held in 2018 at ICAR-Directorate of Groundnut Research, Junagadh, Gujarat. He has also received the Junior Research Fellowship from the Department of Biotechnology, Government of India for my master’s research in 2012.