M. Maheswari is the former Director of ICAR-Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture (CRIDA), Hyderabad, India. She has 130 articles including research papers in high impact international journals, book chapters, reviews, bulletins etc. Co-edited one book on Crop Stress Management- Springer. She has been awarded the prestigious Panjabrao Deshmukh Woman Agricultural Scientist Award of ICAR in 2005. Her main area of work is high throughput plant phenotyping, transgenic sorghum for drought tolerance and adaptive mechanisms including compensatory growth responses, recovery patterns in water relations and carbon and nitrogen metabolism in a wide range of rainfed crops such as sorghum, pearl millet, groundnut, sunflower, blackgram, greengram, cowpea and cluster bean.