Shanthinie Ashokkumar is a final-year Ph.D., (Plant Biotechnology) student at Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India. Has six years of research experience in CRISPR/Cas9 mediated genome editing in rice crop. Current focus on developing high yielding rice, aromatic rice, male sterile rice lines for utilisation in hybrid rice programmes. Also works on imparting sheath blight and bacterial leaf blight resistance in popular elite rice cultivars via CRISPR/Cas9 technology.