Dr. Kaushik Banerjee, President , India Section of AOAC

Dr. Kaushik Banerjee is the President of the newly formed Executive Committee. He is a National Fellow (ICAR) and Principal Scientist from the ICAR-National Research Centre for Grapes, Pune. He pursued his PhD in Agricultural Chemicals at Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi with specialization in pesticide residue chemistry and was a post-Doctoral Visiting Scientist at the Institute of Environmental Research, Technical University of Dortmund, Germany.

He is a recipient of Fellow of the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences (FNAAS) and Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC), London.

Dr. Banerjee has widely published in peer-reviewed journals. He has served as a Member of the AOAC Expert Review Panel and currently regularly contributes to the FSSAI scientific panel regarding fixation of MRLs and analysis of pesticide residues and other food contaminants. In recognition to his research contributions, he has been invited to a number of international meetings and conferences, such as IUPAC crop protection conference and AOAC Annual Meetings in USA, European Pesticide Residue Workshops, Fresenius Conference (Germany), Latin American Pesticide Residue Workshop, etc. He is also an empanelled trainer on agrochemical residue analysis for International Atomic Energy Agency.

His current area of research predominantly focuses on the development of LC-MS and GC-MS based residue analysis methods for the estimation of food and environmental contaminants. The other component of his research involves safety evaluation of agrochemicals and developing strategies to minimize agrochemical residues in crops at harvest.

Since 2004, Dr. Banerjee is actively involved in implementing the agrochemical residue monitoring plan of APEDA, Ministry of Commerce, Government of India to promote the export of fruits and vegetables from India to the European Union countries. He has significantly contributed in developing the analytical competence of the food testing laboratories across India and implement trace level residue monitoring systems in compliance with the international guidelines.