Manju Gupta

Biography

  Manju Gupta was just 14 years old when she knew she wanted to be a scientist. “In high school, I enjoyed biology and I was fascinated with learning about plants and animals,” Manju said. “I’m grateful that my father insisted that I get an education, even though his father didn’t think this was necessary. For my grandfather, girls got married and that was enough. But my father supported my passion for science.” His support allowed Manju to transform her talent and dedication into a career as a leading researcher in agricultural science that has impacted people’s lives around the world. “One of the first areas I worked on was transferring genes from algae into rice plants, which eliminates the need for rice field fertilization,” Manju said. “This helps farmers save time and money so they can feed more people. Now it has become my life’s passion to improve crops for sustained agriculture and better human health.” Fielding Tough Questions, Finding Answers Throughout her career as a scientist and researcher, Manju has found that there are three keys to solving tough problems: persistence, observation and collaboration. She applied these principles to find a critical solution during the development of Herculex-RW™, an industry-leading product that makes plants resistant to crucial insects. Herculex-RW was created through a collaboration between several companies and their teams of researchers. During field trials in the product development stage, Manju and the other researchers were confronted with a major obstacle – highly undesirable red leafs in corn plants. The other researchers focused on work in the lab, but Manju took a different approach. “Very few were observing the problem in the field,” she said. “I was working in the lab, but realized what was happening in the field was a critical missing dimension. I communicated with DowAgroSciences’ field scientist, Jim Bing, every day. These conversations led me to hypothesize that the expression of certain genes was the root cause of the red leaf issue. This proved true. We then corrected the problem, which cleared the way for product development.”

Research Interest