Islam Mohammad Rafiqul

Biography

"Rafiqul is a plant breeder specializing in rainfed and irrigated rice breeding and genetics of salinity tolerance and problem soils in the Plant Breeding, Genetics, and Biotechnology Division (PBGB) of IRRI. Before joining IRRI, Rafiqul worked as a plant breeder in the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI) in 1998 and conducted his PhD thesis research in IRRI from 2003 to 2006. He came back to IRRI as a postdoctoral fellow in PBGB on 1 October 2011 and worked with the salinity and problem soil team. In his postdoctoral research, he identified variety NSIC Rc222 (IRRI154), which is now being used as a sensitive check in IRRI. He also identified IR58443-6B-10-3 as a salinity-tolerant variety at the seedling and reproductive stages. He developed about 15 populations from different backgrounds of high-yielding varieties (HYV) using marker-assisted background selection for salinity tolerance. These are now in different trial stages for release as salt-tolerant varieties in South and Southeast Asia."

Research Interest

Crop and Environmental Sciences