Dr. Suresh Kumar Malhotra

Born on 3^rdFebruary, 1963 at Rohtak, Haryana, Dr SK Malhotra had his graduation in; 1984, M.Sc in horticulture from GBPUA&T, Pantnagar in 1986 and Ph. D. from CCS, HAU, Hisar in 1989. Starting his career as Assistant Professor (Vegetable Crops) at HPKV Palampur (1989) and served as Assistant Scientist (Sr. Scale) at CCSHAU, Hisar (1994). He joined ICAR as Senior Scientist (Hort.) in 2000 at NRC Seed Spices, Ajmer and became Principal Scientist in 2007. Subsequently, he served Govt. of India as ADG (Hort), Horticulture Commissioner and Agriculture Commissioner in the Ministry of Agriculture FW and Director (2022-2024), ICAR-Directorate of Knowledge Management in Agriculture. Presently, he is working as Vice Chancellor, at Maharana Pratap Horticultural University, Karnal (Feb 2024 onwards).

Achievements:

As Agriculture Commissioner, he steered India’s development agenda in agriculture for food, nutrition, and income security through administration of National Food Security Mission. As Chairman of Insecticide Board Registration Committee, Central Fertilizer Committee, Central Biostimulant Committee and Central Seed Certification Board, his contributions are immense in formation of policy framework and guidelines for registration and commercialization of novel products and seed regulations. During his tenure as Horticulture Commissioner, he architected and implemented Per Drop More Crop- of PMKSY, High value agriculture for Island Agriculture, National Saffron Mission and National Bee Honey Mission, Cluster Development in Horticulture programs. As a Director ICAR-DKMA, he revamped the publication system and introduced new version of ICAR e-pub portal, DOI, plagiarism checking, new policy for collaborations for co-publication and brought reforms for enhancement of impact factor of ICAR research journals.

Awards and Honors:

BioAg Asia Policy leadership award-2022, Global Agriculture Leadership Award – ICFA, India-2016, Progressive Horticulture Leadership award-2023, HS Mehta, Young Scientist Award-2011, Dr. RS Paroda award-2015, Dr. G. Kalloo award-2019, Dr. Kirti Singh Award-2017, Hukum Singh Memorial award-2019, PNASF-Young Scientist Gold Medal -2005, JS Pruthi Award-2010, Lakhiram Memorial award-2012; AIFPA-Award-2013, AF-Professional Excellence Award-2014, Horticulture Leadership Award 2021-22. He is Honorary Fellow of eleven professional societies and guiding 4 professional societies as President and Vice President for furtherance of horticulture in the country.