The launch of two dual-degree programs offered by Cornell with India's Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU) means that 13 Indian students who arrived in Ithaca in early June are now part of history.

They are the inaugural class of new Master of Professional Studies (MPS) programs in plant breeding and food science -- the first agricultural life sciences degrees to be offered by a U.S. university specifically for Indian students. They will study at Cornell until December and then complete their degree requirements at TNAU in Coimbatore, India, to graduate next summer with an MPS degree from Cornell and a Master of Technology (M.Tech.) degree from TNAU.

The students plan to apply their new expertise about state-of-the-art lab equipment and the latest processes taught at Cornell to Indian agriculture and industry.

"This program is the first of its kind to be offered in India's state agricultural system and offers students exposure to courses and experience that cannot be gained in India," said K.V. Raman, Cornell professor of plant breeding who helped create the degree programs. "This exposure will increase greatly their opportunities for work in rural development and outreach in India."

For example, Kriti Saxena in the food science MPS program wants to better understand product development and marketing to bring the variety of mango products available in India -- including concentrates, juices, oils, pickles, chutneys and dried slices -- to the global market.

"Mango has a wide scope on the Indian market; it's the most widely grown fruit," she said. She will also study the chemistry of ripening fruits to see "what can be done to improve the shelf life," she said.

New canning techniques to preserve food still have to be developed in India, said Revathi Shanmugam, also a food science MPS student, who wants to work in industry for several years before starting her own canning enterprise in India. "I have learned a lot of engineering related subjects" at TNAU, she said, "but here we learn a lot of marketing as well. I'll be able to develop a product and then market it."

Chiranth C. Rajashekar in the plant breeding and genetics program plans to learn such genetic techniques as marker-assisted selection for use in India. The technique allows researchers to use a short fragment of DNA, called a marker, to identify a particular region of a plant's genome that may also contain a gene of interest to control such desired traits as disease resistance or flavor. "I can learn some modern techniques in plant breeding that I can use in Indian crops to develop new varieties," he said.

"At TNAU, I was not exposed to lab work," said plant breeding MPS student Roshni Vijayan, who earned her M.S. degree at TNAU conducting field work in drought tolerance in maize. At Cornell she wants to learn techniques for maize genotyping -- understanding the genetic constitution of a cell.

From Cornell's facilities and infrastructure to punctual buses and a vast library system, the students are impressed. "You can take out 400 books" at a time, and "every department has its own library," remarked Saxena.

The program is funded by a five-year, $3 million grant from the Navajbai Ratan Tata Trust through the Cornell-Sathguru Foundation for Development, and a matching contribution of up to $1 million from the foundation, which promotes education, agriculture, technology transfer and rural development. The Tata grant for this program is separate from a recent $50 million donation to Cornell by the Tata Foundation.