ABSTRACT
At Lucknow, space had posed a considerable challenge for the proper functioning of the Central Botanical Laboratory (CBL). The government’s search for a permanent abode for the CBL ended when the Old Commissioner’s Office building in Allahabad located within 7-acre grounds ticked all boxes. The chief activities of the CBL under Janaki’s directorship, over the five-year period from the time of its inception in 1954 until 1959, revolved around accomplishing something of what Vavilov would have, had he been allowed to travel in India in the 1930s. Her aims were also clearly the result of her archipelagic thinking, of her great affinity for the Western Ghats and Assam, her passion for plant breeding and introduction and of her ambition to publish a new chromosome atlas of flowering plants.
