astronomy

Virender Lal Chopra

Virender Lal Chopra is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Virender Lal Chopra rather than just read about it. In short: Virender Lal Chopra (9 August 1936 – 18 April 2020) was an Indian biotechnologist, geneticist, agriculturalist and a director-general of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), known to have contributed to the development of wheat production in India. He was the chancellor of Central University of Kerala, a Chancellor of the Central Agricultural University, Imphal and a member of the Planning Commission…

Key takeaways

Virender Lal Chopra belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
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Connect Virender Lal Chopra to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Virender Lal Chopra from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Virender Lal Chopra (9 August 1936 – 18 April 2020) was an Indian biotechnologist, geneticist, agriculturalist and a director-general of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), known to have contributed to the development of wheat production in India. He was the chancellor of Central University of Kerala, a Chancellor of the Central Agricultural University, Imphal and a member of the Planning Commission of India. An elected fellow of several science academies such as Indian Academy of Sciences, Indian National Science Academy, National Academy of Agricultural Sciences, National Academy of Sciences, India, European Academy of Sciences and Arts and The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS), he was a recipient of a number of honors including Borlaug Award, FAO World Food Day Award and Om Prakash Bhasin Award. The Government of India awarded him the third highest civilian honour of the Padma Bhushan, in 1985, for his contributions to agricultural science.

Biography Virender Lal Chopra was born on 9 August 1936 in Adhwal, a small village in the Rawalpindi District of the Punjab Province of British India (now in Punjab, Pakistan), into a Punjabi Hindu Khatri family, to parents Harbans Lal and Sukhwanti. Chopra's family moved to Delhi before the Partition of India, where he did his early schooling at Ramjas School, Delhi. After securing his graduate degree with honours in agricultural science from Central College of Agriculture, Delhi University in 1955 and following it up with an associateship at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) during 1955–57, he proceeded to the Institute of Genetics, University of Cologne on a senior Humboldt scholarship. Subsequently, he shifted his base to Edinburgh in 1964 and secured a doctoral degree (PhD) in Genetics from the Institute of Genetics of the University of Edinburgh in 1967, presenting the thesis "Tests for genetic effects of irradiated or chemically treated media in Drosophila and micro-organisms". Chopra's career took prominence when he became the director of Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) in 1979 which was his first major position where he was in charge of the planning and management of research in genetics and biotechnology. He stayed at the post for one year before turning to academics as the professor of genetics at the same institution, a post he held till 1985 when he moved to National Research Centre on Plant Biotechnology as a Professor of Eminence and the director of the centre. Simultaneously he served as a member of the scientific advisory committee to the Prime Minister of India from 1986 to 1990. He moved to Vietnam in 1990 as the chief technical adviser to the Government of Vietnam on a Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) assignment which lasted 15 months. It was during this period, he assisted the Vietnam government in the establishment of the Agriculture Genetics Institute (AGI) in Hanoi. In 1992, the Government of India appointed him a secretary with the responsibility of the director-general of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), the apex agency in India for agricultural education and research. After his retirement from the ICAR in 1994, he continued his association with the agency as its B. P. Pal National Professor and in 2004, he was appointed as a member of the science council of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), the largest research entity run on public funding in agriculture in the world. At CGIAR, he served as a member of several committees and boards of the member organizations and as its Regional Representative for Asia. During this period, he was also a member of the now-defunct Planning Commission of India, headed by Montek Singh Ahluwalia.

Chopra died on April 18, 2020, in New Delhi.

Positions and publications Chopra served as the president of the International Genetics Federation from 1983 to 1988. He was a founder member of the Executive council of the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences and served as its president, secretary and vice-president during different tenures and was associated with the Indian National Science Academy in various capacities. He was a member of many trustee boards, MS Swaminathan Research Foundation, Gujarat State Fertilizers and Chemicals Research Foundation, Tea Research Association and Centre for Advancement of Sustainable Agriculture, counting among non governmental organizations and International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) and International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CYMMIT) featuring among the global research organizations. He was also a member of the Science Council of the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research and a vice chairman (1989) of the International Board for Plant Genetic Resources, the present-day Bioversity International. He was the chancellor of the Central University of Kerala, appointed to the position in 2012. Chopra was the author of many books and articles on plant breeding and genetics. Plant Breeding: Theory and Practice, Handbook of Industrial Crops, Breeding Field Crops and Search for New Genes are some of the notable books, the last one was co-written by Benjamin Peary Pal and R. P. Sharma. Approaches for Incorporating Drought and Salinity Resistance in Crop Plants, Technologies for Livelihood Enhancement, Genetics: Applied genetics, and Applied Plant Biotechnology are some of his other books. He presented papers at many science and agricultural conferences; Agricultural Biotechnology at the 2nd Asia Pacific Conference and Genetics, new frontiers at the XV International Congress of Genetics are two such papers.

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Virender Lal Chopra

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Virender Lal Chopra claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Virender Lal Chopra before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Virender Lal Chopra ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Virender Lal Chopra

In research: Virender Lal Chopra appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Virender Lal Chopra in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Virender Lal Chopra is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1936 births, 2020 deaths, 20th-century Indian biologists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Virender Lal Chopra outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Virender Lal Chopra in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Virender Lal Chopra means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Virender Lal Chopra out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Virender Lal Chopra in simple terms?

Why does Virender Lal Chopra matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Virender Lal Chopra?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Virender Lal Chopra.