Dr N. Mathivanan and his wife Mrs. V.R. Prabavathy are working on fungal secondary metabolites

Mrs. V.R. Prabavathy from the Centre for Advanced Studies in Botany, University of Madras, Guindy Campus, Chennai - 600 025, India has recently submitted her Ph. D. thesis on "Isolation, purification and characterization of antimicrobial metabolites produced by Streptomyces sp. and their evaluation for the management of blast and sheath blight diseases of rice". Previously she worked as Lecturer in Biology and later served as Research Associate in the Nagarjuna Agricultural Research and Development Institute, Hyderabad, India. She has experience on isolation and identification of different microorganisms, isolation and purification of antimicrobial metabolites. She is having rich experience on mass multiplication and formulation of biocontrol agents and biofertilizers. In addition, she has good experience in strain improvement in filamentous fungi specifically Trichoderma by protoplast fusion technique. She has isolated several actinomycetes from South Indian soils and identified a Streptomyces sp. with excellent antimicrobial activity against plant and human pathogens. She has developed fermentation process to grow the Streptomyces sp. for the production of antifungal metabolites and extracted two compounds from the culture filtrate, purified them and characterized by spectral analyses by mass, IR, 1H NMR and 13C NMR. She has evaluated these compounds against rice pathogens and the compound-I significantly inhibited R. solani and decreased the sheath blight disease in rice with commensurate increase in grain yield. She has co-authored a book and published four research papers in peer reviewed journals and five book chapters. In additions, she has attended many national and international conferences and presented papers. Presently she is a visiting scientist working on secondary metabolites of Fusarium chlamydosporum in the Molecular Plant Pathology lab of Prof. Dr. Petr. Karlovsky.

Dr. N. Mathivanan is Lecturer from the Centre for Advanced Studies in Botany, University of Madras, Guindy Campus, Chennai - 600 025, India. After completing his Ph. D. thesis on "Studies on extracellular chitinase and secondary metabolites produced by Fusarium chlamydosporum, an antagonists to Puccinia arachidis, the rust pathogen of groundnut" he joined with the Nagarjuna Agricultural Research and Development Institute, Hyderabad, India as Scientist in 1995 and later elevated as Program Leader for Plant Pathology and Microbial Metabolites Programme. He has developed strong research activities on Biological Control and Microbial Metabolites in this Institute and received grants from Department of Biotechnology (DBT) and Indian Council of Agricultural Research, Government of India for his research projects. He has developed cost effective protocols for mass multiplication and formulation of biocontrol agents and biofertilizers. He is mainly responsible for creating awareness among farmers in Andhra Pradesh State of India for the use of biocontrol agents formulations especially Trichoderma viride and Pseudomonas fluorescens with the support of the DBT and the Nagarjuna Group, Hyderabad. Then he has joined with the University of Madras in 2002 because of his academic interest. He is continuing his research on both biological control and microbial metabolites and investigating the potential of bacteria, actinomycetes and fungi. He is having excellent experience on isolation, purification and characterization of secondary metabolites and lytic enzymes and also on strain improvement in filamentous fungi by protoplast fusion technique. He has published several papers in peer reviewed journals and book chapters and edited a book. He has attended number of national and international conferences and presented his research findings. He is currently guiding 8 research students who are working in different aspects of the above research areas for their doctoral degree. He visited Osaka University, Japan under the AMBO fellowship. Presently he is working on a collaborative research project on the "Secondary metabolites of Fusarium chlamydosporum" with Prof. Dr. Petr. Karlovsky under the INSA-DFG Bilateral Scientists Exchange Programme.

Molecular Phytopathology Institute of Plant Pathology and Plant Protection Grisebachstrasse 6, 37077 Goettingen, Germany FAX: +49 551 3912919