Chitra Shanker
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 research 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.