Dr. Jyoti Kumari is Principal Scientist (Plant Breeding) at ICAR-NBPGR, New Delhi.
She obtained her master's and doctoral degrees from ICAR-IARI, New Delhi in
Genetics. She joined as ARS scientist (Plant Breeding) in ICAR in 2005 and worked at
ICAR-IIPR, and Division of Genetics, ICAR-IARI, New Delhi. She got appointed as
Senior Scientist (Plant Breeding) at ICAR-NBPGR, New Delhi through direct selection
in 2010.

Her research interest includes varietal development and plant genetic resource management of wheat, maize, pearl millet and pulses. Her major scientific contribution includes mega characterization and evaluation of ~22,000 wheat germplasm, development of core (2226 acc.) and minicore (224 acc.) set
from the entire wheat germplasm conserved in the Indian National Gene Bank. She has significantly contributed in evaluation and identification of trait specific germpalsm for biotic (rust diseases, foliar blight, powdery mildew and smut) and abiotic stresses (drought, terminal heat and salinity stress) in
wheat. She has contributed in diversity analysis for effective utilization of crops such as wheat, maize, lentil, vigna and pigeonpea. She has identified several accessions with unique traits including high popping accession in pearl millet, waxy lines in maize, high grain protein, high zinc content, rust, powdery mildew and spot blotch tolerant accessions in wheat. She has also identified QTLs for terminal heat tolerance, salt tolerance and seedling root architecture traits using genome wide association strategy. She has contributed in augmentation of rice and wheat germplasm from the drought and heat prone areas of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Gujarat. She has also conserved more than 9000 germplasm of wheat and maize in medium term storage and regenerated more than 5000 wheat accessions for long term storage in National Gene Bank. In addition, she has supplied more than 11,000 wheat germplasm for research purpose to breeders/researchers.

She has to her credit more than 120 publications, including 66 research papers in national and international journals of high repute. She has also involved in development of four varieties in lentil and mungbean and registered 21 genetic stocks with Plant Germplasm Registration Committee. She has been ISGPB fellow since 2012.