Sunitha Panigrahi: Saving the bananas

She is also a mother of two children and works at St Mary’s College, Yousufguda. The award was presented to her by HRD minister Ganta Srinivasa Rao at Visakhapatnam.

The Young Scientist Award is given every year to a person pursuing exciting and innovative research. Sunitha, in fact, was chosen from a pool of 1,200 applicants comprising student groups, researchers, scholars, etc. Her research paper was a culmination of her work for the past eight years and was focused on banana plantations.

“Bananas form an integral part of a person’s diet, be they rich or poor. A banana stem when planted as per traditional practices, takes six months to yield produce. But tissue-cultured banana plantlets (grown in laboratories), take only two months and yield multi-fold produce. But a lot depends on the quality of the soil and the plantlet. If the plantlet is not strong enough, it doesn’t survive,” says Sunitha.

She explains what her research paper was all about.“Vaccinations during childhood help children become immune to many diseases, similarly a tissue cultured banana plantlet needs to be vaccinated before it is planted so that it can survive effectively and give multi fold yield. The vaccination, which is not available in the market, was the end product of my research.

“There was a lot of running around, going to the farms, working for long hours, going through the information available online… I was on my feet round the clock, and would end up coming home late in the night,” says Sunitha, who feels the hard work was worth it.

“My husband, who would dutifully pick up and drop me no matter how far the location was, and children were my biggest supporters. My students, whom I usually involve in various researches, and my colleagues are also very happy for me. I love being a teacher and a researcher,” she says.

About taking her research to farms, Sunitha says, “Now I am working on getting a patent and then getting the vaccine to the market so that farmers can use it,” she says.