Associate Professor Department of Veterinary Parasitology College of Veterinary Science Guru Angad Dev Veterinary & Animal Sciences University (GADVASU), Ludhiana, Punjab INDIA
Dr. Harkirat Singh (PhD, MIAAVP, MISP, MIAAVR, MISACP, MSVAHE) has more than 13 years of scientific career dedicated to research, teaching and extension. He is working as Associate Professor in the Department of Veterinary Parasitology, College of Veterinary Science, GADVASU, Ludhiana. He did his BVSc & AH programme in 2003 from Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana and then pursued MVSc and PhD in the subject of Veterinary Parasitology from Indian Veterinary Research Institute, Izatnagar, Bareilly in the year 2005 and 2009, respectively. He worked on immunological and nucleic acid based diagnosis of bovine babesiosis in masters and expression, characterization and immunoprophylactic evaluation of Toxoplasma gondii specific SAG2 and GRA5 proteins in the doctoral programme. He has been instrumental in developing instructional materials for postgraduate and undergraduate teaching in the form of various lectures, power point presentations, charts, specimen slides and practical manuals, etc. He has also published one book entitled “Diagnostic Veterinary Parasitology: An Introduction” in the area of diagnostic strategies for parasitic infections in livestock and companion animals.
He has 106 research publications in journals of international and national repute. Besides, 41 popular/extension articles, 16 technical articles in different training manuals/compendiums/souvenirs, 58 GenBank accession numbers in NCBI and 63 abstracts in various conferences have also been contributed by him. He has handled various research projects on themes of integrated management and control of parasitic diseases in domestic animals, various assays as diagnostic tool for detection of synthetic pyrethroid and ivermectin resistance in cattle tick, effect of climate change towards livestock production system and nucleic acid based protocols for detection of tick borne blood parasites of dogs. He is also a principal investigator of one research project on multiplex-polymerase chain reaction based detection of tick borne canine haematozoan diseases funded by Department of Biotechnology, New Delhi. As co-investigator, he has 05 research projects under his name which are sponsored by various funding agencies such as UGC, RKVY and MoEFCC. He was also instrumental in developing a loop mediated isothermal amplification assay for specific, sensitive and cost effective diagnosis of canine hepatozoonosis as well as a simple read out technology (naked eye visualisation of LAMP products) by addition of SYBR Green I dye. He has worked on PCR based detection of various economically important haematozoan infections of cattle and dogs. He has worked on development of epidemiological maps of various economically important parasites (endo- and ectoparasites) of cattle population of Punjab state and also generated maps of cattle ixodid ticks resistant to various chemical acaricides.
Dr. Singh is also working extensively on development of PCR protocols and their variants for early, sensitive and specific diagnosis of blood parasitic diseases of dogs to elucidate the predictive molecular biology of these parasites. He is also working in the field of herbal control of ixodid cattle ticks of Punjab as an alternative strategy to combat the problem of acaricide resistance. He has also worked as reviewer for various international and national journals such as Acta Tropica, Tropical Animal Health and Production, Ticks and Tick-Borne Diseases, Medical and Veterinary Entomology, Parasitology Research, Veterinary Parasitology: Regional Studies and Reports, The Scientific World Journal, Advances in Animal and Veterinary Sciences, International Journal of Livestock Research, The Haryana Veterinarian, Exploratory Animal and Medical Research, Journal of Parasitic Diseases and Journal of Veterinary Parasitology. He has attended and presented research papers in various conferences and has been bestowed with awards/recognitions of different national professional societies. He has been the recipient of ICAR-Junior Research Fellowship during the Masters Degree programme. He is also an Associate Member of National Academy of Veterinary Sciences (India) for the year 2018-19 and has received Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Alumni Association, COVS, GADVASU, Ludhiana.
As regards human resource development, he has guided 04 MVSc students as Major Advisor till date. His students have worked on nucleic acid based detection of canine monocytic ehrlichiosis, canine hepatozoonosis and ivermectin resistance in Rhipicephalus microplus tick populations of Punjab and its mitigation by application of synergists. He has been in the advisory committees of 10 MVSc students and 03 PhD students. Besides the teaching and research activities, he also performs monthly duty in Clinical Diagnostic Laboratory of the institute and interprets various clinical samples (blood, faeces and skin scrapings, etc.) submitted for detection of parasitic infections of large and small animals. He has delivered several lectures in the refresher/training courses for veterinary officers, livestock owners and has also given lectures on radio channels regarding diagnosis and control of parasitic diseases of livestock. He has been external examiner and question paper setter for undergraduate students of various colleges and universities such as LUVAS (Hisar), SKUAST-Jammu, SKUAST-Kashmir, and CSKHPKV (Palampur), etc. At present, he has been imparting training to the undergraduate and postgraduate students at one of the best veterinary universities of India and pursuing research work in the field of molecular diagnosis of haemoparasitic diseases that can be employed in the field and serve as substantial aid to the end users of the society.
