Tuesday, 21 October 2014
Sunday, 12 October 2014
M.O.P.
Iyengar
Mandayam Osuri Parthasarathy Iyengar(1886-1963) was a
prominent Indian botanist and phycologist who researched the structure,
cytology, reproduction and taxonomy of Algae. He is known as the "father
of Indian phycology" or "father of algology in India".
Professor M.O.P Iyengar served a major part of his life
teaching at the Presidency College, Madras, and the last dozen years as
Professor at the new established University Research Laboratory at Madras. Iyengar
aimed to obtain a comprehensive knowledge of India’s algal wealth, its
diversity and ecology.
Iyengar’s earlier studies began with the Volvocales and
these provided the material for his publications, both from Madras and from
Professor Fritsch’s laboratory in London. At the University research
department, as a Professor and Director, many in-depth studies of the colonial
Volvocales were made. Their work revealed the occurrence of singular patterns
of inversion both in the vegetative and reproductive stages of development
among the spherical or globular genera. The fertilization stages were also
recorded.
A pseudo-filamentous alga, Ecballocystopsis Iyengar, led him to conceive of a new way of
developing a filamentous condition, a step in the development of a
multicellular condition. The two sibling cells do not separate from each other
as in unicellular Volvocales though each gets enveloped in a complete cell
wall. They remain enclosed in the remnants of the parental envelope partially
or totally. With further divisions, parental envelopes of different generations
begin to get ruptured but the daughter cells are kept together by fragments of
parental envelopes of the immediate previous generation. The upshot is a
linear, end to end association of daughter cells of many generations but without
protoplasmic connections between neighbouring cells. Instead of producing a
mass of cells, a multicellular condition is arrived, a pseudofilamentous condition.
The objective was to understand the morphological steps representing the
probable evolutionary steps to achieve a multicellular organism and ultimately
the structural framework to achieve a land habit,
Iyengar described another interesting alga from India, Fritschiella which show a heterotrichous
habit, one part of the body being subterranean and one part, aerial. In one of
the interesting genus, named Gilbertsmithia
Iyengar, the eight daughter cells formed from each parent cell take on the
shape of a rosary. The eight are attached to each other by eight fragments of
the parent cell. In the next generation a compound of the eight rosaries is
formed. Iyengar waited many years to see the complete life cycle of his
favourite organism, sometimes in vain. Many years later Prof. Smith visited
India and saw it. These species constitute the floral components of an unusual
habitat, and are called muddy water algae. Thus a palmelloid association is made
up of partial remnants of parent walls and mucilage derived by gelatinization
of portions of the parent wall.
An active teacher all his life, Iyengar had acquired a
reputation for the credibility for his observations and it was hazardous to
contradict him. No wonder, because he was reticent to publish in a hurry. He
would wait, often endlessly, to study rare algae with their peculiar and
important characteristics before publishing.
Panchanan
Maheswari
Panchanan
Maheswari (November 1904 – 18 May 1966) was a prominent Indian botanist and
Fellow of the Royal Society, noted chiefly for his invention of the technique
of test-tube fertilization of angiosperms. Till then no one had thought that
flowering plants could be fertilized in test-tubes. Maheshwari’s technique
immediately opened up new avenues in plant embryology and has applications in
economic and applied botany. Cross-breeding of many flowering plants which
cannot crossbreed naturally can be done now. The technique has proved to be of
immense help to plant breeders.
He
was second Indian Botanist to be awarded F.R.S. by Royal Society of London in
1965. Maheshwari was an educator and publisher. He taught Botany at the
University of Delhi, establishing that department as a globally important
center of research in embryology and tissue culture. Maheshwari founded the
scientific journal Phytomorphology, for which he served as chief editor until
his death in 1966; and the more popular magazine Botanica. He also published
texts to improve the standard of teaching life sciences in the schools. In
1951, he founded the International Society of Plant Morphologists.
Friday, 3 October 2014
Rediscovery of Ophiorrhiza barnesii from Kerala
Ophiorrhiza
barnesii of the family Rubiaceae was
first described in 1939, by a British botanist C E C Fischer based on two
collections made by Prof. Edward Barnes. Both of the two specimens were
collected from Kallar Valley during 1937. However, no further researchers
reported the plant from any other part of the state. According to researchers,
subsequent botanical explorations even considered the chances that the plant
may be possibly extinct by this time. Researchers at the Jawaharlal Nehru
Tropical Botanic Garden and Research Institute (TBGRI) have re discovered the
plant from Kallar valley in Western Ghats of Kerala.
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