Welcome to Suresh Desai's webpage

Research Interests

As part of my Ph.D thesis research I am investigating, several approaches that could help in identification of bee viruses in pollinators, help beekeepers deal with the problem of colony loss due to bee viruses, and develop new methods to manage and/or control virus that would be economical to apply. My objectives are, 1) Developing RNA interference to prevent deformed wing virus infection in larval and adult honeybees ( Apis mellifera L.) through dsRNA ingestion. 2) Effect of honey bee viruses and their association with other diseases and parasites on colony loss in honey bee Apis mellifera L. colonies. 3) Occurrence and quantification of economically important honey bee viruses in Honey bees Apis mellifera L. in Canada. My research, based on recent advances in molecular biology to detect, quantify and control viruses, will increase our understanding of how viruses affect life span of pollinators. I am also working on the identification of bee viruses and other pathogens affecting the native pollinators in beekeeping and non-beekeeping areas. The experiments outlined above will increase our understanding of how viruses affect life span of honey bees and will use recent advances in molecular biology to develop methods to control viruses.

Background
I did my Bachelors in Agriculture at College of Agriculture, Raichur, Karnataka, India in 2000 at the University of Agricultural Sciences, Dharwad. In 2002 I completed my M.Sc (Agri) in Agricultural Entomology at Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore. My master's research was titled “Mutualistic relationship between Bees and Coconut palm”. Later, in 2003, I joined the Project Directorate of Biological Control, (ICAR) Bangalore as Senior Research Fellow. In 2004 I was enrolled as a for PhD candidate in Entomology at University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore prior to joining Dr. Rob Currie’s Bee Lab, University of Manitoba as PhD student in January 2005.