Dr Dharminder Pathak earned his Master’s Degree and Ph.D. in Plant Breeding at thePunjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, Punjab, India. He joined as Assistant Plant Breeder (Assistant Professor) at the Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana on December 31, 2001. Dr Pathak has developed 25 cotton cultivars of Upland cotton and desi cotton (G. arboreum) as well as one variety of celery. He has been instrumental in initiating and strengthening wide hybridization research in cotton at the Punjab Agricultural University, which resulted in the successful introgression and mapping of cotton leaf curl disease (CLCuD) resistance from diploid wild cotton species, G. armourianum to Upland cotton. He has developed pre-breeding lines possessing several useful characteristics such as tolerance to whitefly etc. His current research interests include germplasm enhancement in cotton through alien introgression utilizing genomics tools. Dr Pathak teaches courses in genetics and plant breeding to undergraduate and postgraduate students. He has successfully guided 11 M.S. and three Ph.D. students as Major Advisor. Currently, he is guiding two Ph.D. and one M.S. student. He has handled several competitive projects as Principal Investigator. He has published in high impact journals. Recently, Dr Pathak has edited a book, Cotton: Some Insights (DOI:  10.5281/zenodo.8298304).He has attended several national and international conferences in India and abroad including World Cotton Research Conference (2011, 2016,  2022, 2024) . He was invited by International Cotton Advisory Committee (ICAC) to deliver talk during the plenary meetings in Brisbane, Australia (2019) and Tashkent, Uzbekistan (2024).

Professional Accomplishments

Research Projects completed

1. Transfer and mapping of cotton leaf curl disease resistance from Gossypiumarboreum to G. hirsutum (under the programme support “Enhancing durability of resistance to biotic stresses in selected cereal and fibre crops through biotechnological approaches”) funded by Department of Biotechnology (Govt. of India) , New Delhi
2. Development of cotton varieties resistant to cotton leaf curl disease (CLCuD) , bacterial leaf blight (BLB) and nematodes through marker assisted breeding funded by ICAR through CICR, Nagpur
3. Development and promotion of medium and long linted cottons (G. arboreum and G. herbaceum) funded by ICAR through CICR, Nagpur
4. Development of diploid cotton cultivars with high fibre quality funded by ICAR through CICR, Nagpur

Selected Research Publications:

1. Hu G,  Houston N L, Pathak D, Schmidt L, Thelen J J and Wendel J F (2011) Genomically biased accumulation of seed storage proteins in allopolyploid cotton. Genetics189(3):1103-15. doi: 10.1534/genetics.111.132407.
2. Pathak D, Rathore P, Kaur H, Singh B, Kumar H, Ali A, Punia S, Sekhon P S and Singh K (2025) Introgression and mapping of cotton leaf curl disease (CLCuD) resistance from wild Gossypiumarmourianum Kearney into upland cotton. Plant Dis. 109 (3): 554-57. doi:10.1094/PDIS-08-24-1645-SC
3. Mondal S, Pathak D, Jindal S, Agrawal N, Gupta M and Rathore P (2024) Morphological, cytological, and molecular characterization of interspecific cotton hybrids derived from Gossypiumhirsutum and G. arboreum Genet Resour Crop Evol. doi: 10.1007/s10722-024-02257-z.
4. Kaur H, Kumar V, Pathak D and Sangha M K (2024) Antibiosis mechanism and bases of resistance to the whitefly, Bemisiatabaci (Gennadius) in upland cotton introgression lines. Phytoparasitica 52:42 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12600-024-01160-8
5. Vij S, Pathak D, Rathore P, Kumar H, Sekhon P S, Bhatia D, Chhuneja P and Singh K (2022) Molecular mapping of CLCuD resistance introgressed from synthetic cotton polyploid in upland cotton. Journal of Genetics, 101(1), 101: 25 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12041-022-01365-y
6. Jindal S, Pathak D, Pandher, Rathore P and Vikal Y (2022) Inheritance and molecular tagging of genes introgressed from Gossypiumarboreum to G. hirsutum for leafhopper tolerance. Journal of Genetics : 101:42. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12041-022-01379-6

Awards and Recognitions:

1. Visiting Scientist in the laboratory of Dr Jonathan F. Wendel, Distinguished Professor and Chair, Dept. of Ecology, Evolution and Organismal Biology, Iowa State University, Ames, USA.
2. For his contributions in cotton breeding, Dr Pathak was awarded Appreciation Certificate (2019) by the Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana.
3. He was awarded Rao Bahadur V. Ramanatha Iyer Award (2023) by the Indian Society for Cotton Improvement (ISCI), Mumbai, India for his excellent contributions in cotton resistance breeding.