Department of Microbiology

The University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore is a pioneer agricultural university in India to create a separate and independent department of Agricultural Microbiology in 1966. The mandate of the department then was to train students at undergraduate and postgraduate levels.

Dr. G. Rangaswami served as Professor and Head of this Department till 1971. He was instrumental in creating the basic infrastructure for teaching and research and was primarily responsible for training several leading soil microbiologists of India today. This department is recognized as one of the best departments among those imparting instruction, training and conducting research in the area of Agricultural Microbiology in India. This department has received research funding from various state, national and international funding agencies. An UNDP review committee has highly appreciated the research contribution of the department in their plant protection programme. Further, at regular intervals training programmes for officials of the state department of agriculture, farmers and junior level researchers are conducted.

Currently, courses such as, General Microbiology, Soil Microbiology, Applied Microbiology, Mushroom production and Forest Microbiology, are offered at the undergraduate level.

The courses at the post graduate level are Microbial Ecology, Fundamentals of Microbiology, Microbial Physiology, Microbial Taxonomy, Microbial Genetics, Soil Microbiology, Microbial Biotechnology, Food Microbiology, Insect Microbiology, Environmental Microbiology and Industrial Microbiology. Further, few specialized courses of 700 series such as, Advanced Soil Microbiology, Autotrophic Microorganisms, Microbial Inoculants in Agriculture and Decomposition of Organic Wastes are also offered at the postgraduate level.

Till now 282 M.Sc. students and 94 Ph. D. students have graduated from this department. A large number of students graduated from this department have been placed at the premier research and development institutions in India and have been successful in securing admission for higher studies in various universities abroad.