The KAU has bagged two Jawaharlal Nehru Awards for PG Agricultural Research during the year 2006. Dr. K. Dinesh Babu and Dr. Deepa S. Nair received the  awards in Horticulture. The award carries a citation, a gold medal and a cash prize of Rs. 20,000/-. The awards were presented  at New Delhi on July 16th 2007 by Sri. Sharad Pawar, Union Minister for Agriculture.

Dr. K. Dinesh Babu’s investigations are essentially a close retracing and revisit to some of the basic cellular events taking place in mango during embryogenesis – Zygotic and nucellar. It clearly threw light on how these two developmental pathways are interrelated, co-ordinated and regulated. Adventive embryogenesis, most rightly nucellar embryogenesis, as it could be traced in these studies in polyembryonic cultivars of mango showed a close dependence on sexual zygotic embryogenesis in the cellular level. Inception of nucellar embryonic initial cells was observed as an event just succeeding fertilization process and zygote formation. In all cases, it took place as an event (zygotic embryogenesis) signaling the occurrence of yet another event (nucellar embryogenesis) by transmitting some stimulus from the former. The successful demarcation of zygotic and nucellar seedlings by employing isozyme genetic markers will definitely be an answer to the limitations of polyembryonic cultivars in hybridization programmes. Dr. K. Dinesh Babu carried out the research work under the guidance of Dr. N. K. Parameswaran at the Department of Pomology and Floriculture, College of Horticulture, Kerala Agricultural University, Thrissur, Kerala.

Dr. Deepa S. Nair worked on certain endangered medicinal plants viz. the Butterfly Pea (Shankhupushpam), the Cowhage Plant (Naikkurana) and Indian Indigo (Neelayamari) and developed protocols for their rapid propagation via somatic embryogenesis. She developed simple and reproducible protocol for rapid preparation of Clitoria ternatea through somatic embryogenesis from leaf explants. Plantlets production at the rate of 60 to 70g of embryogenic callus had indicated that somatic embryogenesis is the fastest method of in-vitro multiplication. Different in-vitro propagation methods standardized for Clitoria ternatea, Mucuna pruriens and Indigofera tinctoria in the study can be effectively utilized for germplasm conservation, genetic transformation and other biotechnological methods of crop improvement. Dr. Deepa S. Nair is Assistant Professor of Horticulture at the Krishi Vigyan Kendra of Kerala Agricultural University, Kumarakom. The research was undertaken at the College of Agriculture, Vellayani under the guidance of Dr. B.R. Reghunath, Associate Professor, Department of Plantation Crops & Spices.