Dr. Virinder Singh Sohu, earned his professional degrees from PAU with distinctions having been awarded S. Iqbal Singh Gold Medal for highest OGPA in M.Sc. and ICAR Senior Research Fellowship during Ph.D. with OGPA 4.00/4.00. During his research career in wheat breeding spanning more than 30 years in the Department of Plant Breeding & Genetics at PAU, he made significant contributions as team member towards release of 37 wheat varieties - 28 PAU wheat varieties (22 developed + 6 evaluated), of which 20 were released at national level, and 9 from other institutes. Notable ones are PBW 343, PBW 373, PBW 502, PBW 550, PBW 725, Unnat PBW 343 and PBW 1 Zn. Averaged over the last 25 years, the wheat varieties developed by him occupied more than 60 per cent of wheat area in Punjab annually. These varieties were also very popular at national level as evident from their continued inclusion in list of top 10 varieties in national breeder seed production program out of more than 300 varieties in seed chain. He has 226 publications to his credit, including 60 full research papers (32 with >6 and 14 with ≥10 NAAS rating).

He got adhoc research projects with more than Rs. 10 crore funding from various agencies and handled 27 adhoc research projects (9 as PI and 18 as Co-PI) relating to biofortification, heat & drought tolerance, rust resistance, etc. He has extensive international exposure and visited international agricultural research CG centres like CIMMYT, Mexico, IRRI, Philippines, ICARDA, Morocco, ICRISAT, India besides other institutions of international repute namely University of Minnesota, USA; University of Sydney, Australia; Wageningen University, Netherlands; Sabanci University, Turkey; Russia, China, and several other countries.

He is recipient of the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative’s 2018 Gene Stewardship Award (as team member) for best wheat research program in the world on rust resistance. He was awarded ICAR Chaudhary Devi Lal Outstanding AICRP Award 2011 for Best AICW&BIP Centre. He was awarded Dr. MV Rao Memorial Award for Distinguished Scientist 2022. He also received Gold Medal for development of wheat variety PBW 343 by PAU at Annual Convocation. Recognizing his contributions, the PAU honoured him with ‘Appreciation Certificate for outstanding research work done in wheat breeding’ during Kisan Mela in 2017. He was elected Fellow of the Indian Society of Genetics and Plant Breeding, New Delhi and is a life member of several professional societies. He served as Editor-in-Chief, of the ‘Crop Improvement’ research journal and member editorial board of ‘Progressive Farming’ and ‘Changi Kheti’. He is Associate Editor, ‘Agricultural Research Journal’, of PAU.

He has been serving as Zonal Coordinator (North Western Plains Zone of India) of the All India Coordinated Wheat & Barley Improvement Project (ICAR) since 2009. He was a Member, Standing Committee of the PPVFRA (Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Authority), New Delhi and Member of Institute Management Committee of the ICAR-Indian Institute of Wheat and Barley Research, Karnal. At PAU, he served as Director TMIPRC (additional charge), Technology Marketing and Intellectual Property Rights Cell and for the past six years, he is leading the wheat research team at PAU as Incharge Wheat Section. He has taught plant breeding courses to undergraduate and postgraduate students and guided 10 M.Sc. and 6 Ph.D. students.