Dr. Raja Ragupathy is a Visiting Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Earth and Environment at the Florida International University, Miami, FL. Earlier, he served as a Scientist at the Directorate of Research, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, India; and a Research Scientist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC), specializing in crop breeding, genomics and quantitative genetics. Raja Ragupathy completed his B.Sc. Agriculture with gold medal and completed his master’s in Plant Breeding and Genetics in India. He obtained his PhD in Plant Science from the University of Manitoba under the mentorship of Dr. Sylvie Cloutier, a pioneer in Plant Genomics. He has several scholarships to his credit including Manitoba Graduate Scholarship for outstanding international students in Manitoba during his PhD program. His research experience includes developing new germplasm and crop ideotypes of perennial wheat and winter durum, and genetic improvement of fall rye and winter triticale and perennial cereal rye. He has more than 16 years of research experience in cereal crop breeding (including rice breeding in India), translational genomics and applied bioinformatics. His research expertise also includes transcriptomics in both cereal and oilseed crops, and its application through molecular breeding. He served as a member of seven professional groups including the Prairie Recommending Committee for Wheat, Rye & Triticale, Alberta Regional Variety Advisory Committee, Saskatchewan Advisory Council on Grain crops. He has unique expertise in both field-based plant breeding, and lab-based genomics and its translation into field-ready cultivar development. He has experience in working with multiple crops such as rice, bread wheat, durum/pasta wheat, fall rye, winter triticale, perennial wheat, kernza, perennial cereal rye, Mendelian pea, flax, and cotton.
In India, Dr. Ragupathy also served as an Assistant Professor from 2000-2009. He taught 18 undergraduate courses at the PJN College of Agriculture, Karaikal, Puducherry, including theoretical and practical classes in economic botany, plant tissue culture, plant biotechnology, genetics, cytogenetics, and crop breeding. Further, he also served as an academic coordinator for 50 undergraduate students and, in that responsibility delegated by the University administration, he supervised and mentored students in their career progression and academic excellence.
Research Areas
Dr. Ragupathy’s research interests include plant genomics, transgenerational epigenetics, transposable elements, genomic prediction in cereal crops, and prebreeding / breeding for sustainable agriculture by understating the biology of perennialism and ratooning ability. In collaboration with USDA-ARS Research Leaders at Miami and Canal Point, he is initiating research for prebreeding for sugarcane improvement, and avocado genomics for gaining insight into Laurel wilt. He is also focused on analyzing sequence and molecular marker data with application towards understanding gene pool dissimilarity and designing optimal sugarcane crosses and coordinating research with key stakeholders of US sugarcane agriculture in Florida.
Education
Ph.D. University of Manitoba, Canada, 2008
Major: Plant Science
Major Advisor: Dr. Sylvie Cloutier, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada
M.Sc. Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, India, 1996
Major: Plant Breeding and Genetics
Major Advisor: Dr. T. S. Raveendran
B.Sc. Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, India, 1993
Major: Agriculture