Nagasamy Nadarajan was born in Tamil Nadu on 16th Dec 1951; obtained Bachelor of Agriculture, Masters in Plant Breeding and Genetics and Ph.D. from TNAU. Dr. Nadarajan started his carrier as Assistant Professor in 1976 at TNAU and worked his way up to Professor. He was Professor & Head, Dept. of Pulses, TNAU; NPRC, Vamban, and Dept. of Plant Breeding and Genetics, AC&RI, Madurai. Dr. Nadarajan is presently Director, Indian Institute of Pulses Research, Kanpur. He has developed 20 varieties of rice, cotton and pulses. His cited pioneering research work are Tagged important 18 QTLs for drought tolerant traits in rice, development of four male sterile lines and 35 restorers in pigeonpea, cyano-bacterial extra cellular products identified as substitute for 2,4-D in MS medium for root induction and proliferation in rice tissue culture, standardized techniques for in-vitro screening for drought tolerance in rice, developed protocol for transgenic chickpea and pigeonpea with cry1Ac/cry1Aabc gene for Helicoverpa resistance, identified RAPD marker OPS 16 linked to restorer allele for A2 cytoplasm of Cajanus. He is the recipient of 3 international and 6 national honours and awards for his outstanding contribution in the field of Plant Breeding and Genetics. He has guided 41 students (PDF-1, Ph.D-15 and M.Sc.Ag.-25). He has in his credit 12 books, 203 research papers of national and international repute and 41 book chapters.