Alumnus Conquers Virus – Hari om Agrawal – 1962
Alumnus Conquers Virus – 1962
Hari om Agrawal from India, Montana State University alumnus currently doing research in the Netherlands on an international fellowship, has purified successfully the clover yellow mosaic virus, according to a report in a recent issue of Nature, a scientific journal published in London.
This is one of the viruses isolated in Montana by an international team of researchers last year as reported by Agrawal at the Montana Academy of Science meeting in Great Falls in 1961. Detailed studies carried on since then resulted in Agrawal’s success in purifying it from the plant host.
According to the Nature article, the virus has a thread-like structure, about 525 millimicrons in length (about 50,000 virus particles to inch).
Agrawal spent two years at Montana State University, carrying on research and earning a master degree in botany last spring. The work on plant viruses was in association with Dr. Meyer Chessin of the MSU Botany, Microbiology and Public Health Department and Dr. Luite Bos, Dutch scientist, who spent four months at MSU last year and with whom Agrawal is working in the Netherlands.
The clover yellow mosaic virus is not a serious economic problem in Montana but is in other countries, according to Chessin. Experimentally, he said, it has caused disease in other legumes.
Previously Agrawal both studied and taught in the Indian Agricultural Institute in New Delhi, India. His home is at Bareilly, India.
The above article appeared in The Sunday Missoulian on June 24, 1962. The article was accompanied by a photo of Agrawal.
https://www.newspapers.com/image/349430102/