For the better

“I got into agriculture serendipitously. Over time, I developed a keen interest in entomology and agricultural microbiology. I went ahead with agricultural microbiology for my Master’s, and the knowledge I gathered during this period motivated me to pursue a PhD in the same.

I initially started my PhD at Chaudhary Charan Singh Haryana Agricultural University, but the lack of financial assistance made me question my decision of venturing into this path. My then supervisor encouraged me to write the entrance exam for the ICAR- Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), New Delhi, which I fortunately qualified and eventually, I joined the Division of Microbiology, ICAR- IARI. Although I spent a small amount of time at Chaudhary Charan Singh Haryana Agricultural University, I will forever be thankful for the immense help I received from the faculty there without any vested interest of theirs , something that we do not see very often in academia.

The biggest hurdle in my PhD was the pandemic, which delayed the progress of my work. Additionally, my work was completely dependent on the availability and working of a particular instrument called Gas Chromatograph (GC), which broke down midway. Since, my work was dependent on the performance of GC, I lost almost eight months in fixing it. Nevertheless, after a long, painful wait, the instrument was finally repaired. I clearly remember getting the…