**Meet the editors**

Arun K. Shanker is serving as Principal Scientist (Plant Physiology) in the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) at the Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture in Hyderabad, India. He is working in the ICAR as a full-time researcher since 1993 and has earned his advanced degree in Crop Physiology while in service. He has been awarded the prestigious Member of

the Royal Society of Chemistry (MRSC), by the Royal Society of Chemistry, London, in 2015. Presently he is working on systems biology approach to study the mechanism of abiotic stress tolerance in crops. His main focus now is to unravel the mechanism of drought and heat stress response in plants to tackle climate change–related threats in agriculture.

Chitra Shanker is a Principal Scientist (Agricultural Entomology) at the ICAR-Indian Institute of Rice Research in Hyderabad, India. She has earned her Masters and Doctoral degrees in Agricultural Entomology from Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, India. Her research interests include integrated pest management and invertebrate biodiversity analysis. Her current re-

search focuses on the analysis of invertebrate biodiversity and harnessing its potential for natural control of pests in rice ecosystem. More specifically, her work examines the impact of floral diversity and ecological engineering concepts and is well published in this field. She is also involved in the development of the Rice Knowledge Management Portal, an ICT initiative to serve improved knowledge and skill sets to a wide range of stakeholders of rice and developing web- and mobile-based farmer-friendly diagnostic tools for decision support.
