Dr. S. Umesh Kanna is an Assistant Professor (Forestry) with Forest Biotechnology specialization working at Department of Tree Breeding, Forest College and Research Institute, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Mettupalayam. He has over 10 years of teaching, research and extension experience and guided more than 15 research scholars. He was trained in Single Nucleotide Polymorphism and Use of Molecular Markers in Tree Improvement at University of Melbourne, Australia. He had more than 85 peer reviewed papers, 12 books and 7 book chapters at his credit. He has organized more than 25 capacity building programmes to the various stake holders including line department officials, researchers, representative from forest based industries, self help groups and farmers. He is currently involved in the inventory and improvement of alternate High Yielding Short Rotation genetic resources for forest based industries.