Turning wheat biofortification research into the science behind India's first biofortified village.
Micronutrient deficiency — "hidden hunger" — affects communities even where food is available. My PhD asked a practical question: can everyday agronomy make a staple crop more nourishing? I designed and ran factorial field trials on wheat biofortification using farmyard manure (FYM), zinc and iron, measured the yield and quality outcomes, published the results in peer-reviewed journals, and translated them into adoption-ready recommendations that fed CSAUAT's wider work on India's first biofortified village at Anupur, Kanpur Dehat.
Hidden hunger — nutrition, not just calories
Micronutrient deficiencies retard the growth of both crops and people. Wheat supplies roughly half of daily energy across much of Asia — and over 70% in rural areas — yet it is naturally low in zinc, and even lower when grown on zinc-poor soils. The trial soil itself was measurably deficient: available zinc 0.53 ppm, available iron 3.96 ppm. Availability of food was not the gap; the nutritional density of the staple was.
The instrument panel
Four connected workstreams
A trial built to isolate what works
Laid out a factorial randomised block design with three factors — FYM (0 or 10 t ha⁻¹), zinc and iron (each: none, soil, one foliar spray, or two foliar sprays) — giving 32 treatment combinations replicated thrice, so effects and interactions could be told apart, not guessed.
96 plots, two seasons, one protocol
Executed the field research end-to-end across two consecutive wheat seasons — soil testing, plot layout, timed foliar applications at heading and milking stages, and harvest measurement of grain and straw yield and quality.
Running it as a managed programme
Managed approximately £30K in research funding across inputs, field operations and analysis — keeping a multi-season, multi-treatment programme on schedule and on budget.
From data to adoption
Analysed yield and quality outcomes, identified the single best-performing combination, and translated it into plain, data-backed recommendations that fed CSAUAT's biofortified-village work — findings people could act on, not just a slide.
The soil-to-village pipeline
My role vs. not my role
Designing and executing the field trials, managing the research funding, collecting and statistically analysing yield and quality data, authoring the peer-reviewed publications, and translating the results into practical adoption recommendations.
The institution-wide rollout of the biofortified village and its policy engagement — a CSAUAT initiative under the university's leadership. My work was the underpinning wheat research that contributed to it, not the programme's ownership.
Problem → intervention → outcome
What the two seasons showed
Before the trial, the practical question was open: would combining farmyard manure with zinc and iron actually beat using any one of them alone — and would it hold up across seasons?
It did. The combination of organic manure, soil zinc and two well-timed foliar iron sprays gave the highest grain and straw yields and the highest grain protein in both years, with yields rising significantly over the untreated control. Protein gains were consistent and repeatable — higher in the second year than the first — pointing to a genuinely reproducible agronomic route to a more nourishing staple.
Evidence & process layer
Field trial & dataset
The replicated factorial RBD behind every number here — soil diagnosis, timed applications, and harvest measurement of grain/straw yield and grain protein across 96 plots.
Peer-reviewed research
Two published articles reporting the biofortification effect of FYM, zinc and iron on the yield and quality of wheat — the second carrying a registered DOI.
Biofortified-village record
Independent documentation that CSAUAT, Kanpur developed India's first biofortified village (Anupur, Kanpur Dehat) — the applied context this research contributed to.
Note: yield, protein and soil figures are quoted directly from the published articles. The biofortified-village reference is quoted from a third-party university year book, not authored by me.
Read the evidence
"The PhD was hands-on end to end — designing the trial, running two seasons in the field, managing the funding, analysing the data, and then making sure the findings didn't just sit in a thesis but became something a grower or an institution could actually use."
The measurable outcomes — grain protein up ~14% and grain yield up to 56.95 q ha⁻¹ under the best combination, across 96 replicated plots — came from that work, published in two peer-reviewed papers and contributing to CSAUAT's biofortified-village programme. Framed honestly: a robust field result and a real contribution, not a solo claim over an institution-wide initiative.
I can take a real-world problem — malnutrition rooted in soil chemistry — structure it into a rigorous, resource-managed experiment, read the data without overclaiming, and carry the result all the way to practical, adoptable recommendations.
This is research commercialisation in miniature: diagnosing a problem, running a disciplined study on a budget, publishing credible evidence, and translating it into real-world impact. The same instinct — rigour in, honest claims out, adoption as the goal — is what I bring to sustainability, food-security and social-impact work.