Nepal’s orchids — sunakhari — bloom from the highest Himalayan reaches to the warm Terai plains. There are more than 500 species of them. Yet for decades, truckloads of these rare plants were being smuggled out of Nepal under the guise of herbal collection, draining the country’s biodiversity treasure without a fraction of its value returning home.

It took one woman — born into an educator’s family in the hills of Tehrathum, trained in the laboratories of Hiroshima, and forged by Nepal’s 18-hour daily load-shedding — to say: not on my watch.

That woman is Prof. Dr. Bijaya Pant, Professor at the Central Department of Botany, Tribhuvan University; Vice-President of the Nepal Biotechnology Association; and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Nepal Biotechnology Association (JNBA). She is also, as of this year, featured among OnlineKhabar’s 50 Most Influential Women of Nepal 2082 — a recognition that barely scratches the surface of what she has built.

Vijaya Pant was born in Chuhandan Danda, Tehrathum, into a family that treated education as the greatest wealth. Her father Haricharan Sitaula and mother Manmaya Sitaula had established a school in their village as far back as 2003 BS — a radical act at a time when even asking for education was difficult.

Her great-grandfather, in the Rana era, reportedly asked for a “light” as a reward for service — and used it to build a school and a bridge. That bridge, called the Sitaula Bridge, still stands in Tehrathum today. It is the kind of legacy that shapes a scientist before she ever holds a pipette.

Vijaya was always a top student. After passing her SLC from Adarsha Vidya Mandir in Ghailadubba, Jhapa — where her elder brother Ram Sitaula was a science teacher — she went to Amrit Science Campus (ASCOL) in Kathmandu, then completed her MSc in Botany at Tribhuvan University, Kirtipur. Then came Hiroshima University, Japan, where she earned her PhD in Plant Biotechnology.

In nature, orchid seeds have only a 1% germination rate. In Dr. Pant’s laboratory, using molecular and tissue culture technology, that rate has been pushed to 99%. This is not just a botanical achievement — it is a conservation milestone that could protect endangered species that were disappearing from Nepal’s forests one truckload at a time.

Under her “Lab to Land” initiative, thousands of tissue-cultured orchid plants have now been planted in Lalitpur, Gorkha, Lumbini, and Ilam — as well as in Jawalakhel Zoo in collaboration with the National Conservation Fund.

Within the Nepal Biotechnology Association, Prof. Dr. Pant serves as Vice-President — a role that may sound administrative but is in fact the backbone of every research grant, every conference, every publication the Association produces. Her meticulous stewardship ensures that NBA can keep doing what it does: advancing biotechnology in Nepal.

As Editor-in-Chief of JNBA Volume 7 (2026), she oversaw a landmark issue: 12 peer-reviewed papers spanning bioethanol, water quality, antimicrobial resistance, orchid conservation, leishmaniasis immunity, and plant biotechnology — 104 pages of science that represents the best Nepal’s researchers have to offer. She assembled an advisory board spanning four continents.

In 2023, she was honored as a TWAS Fellow at a special ceremony in Brazil — one of the highest recognitions available to scientists worldwide. She was also honored as an Academician of the Nepal Academy of Science and Technology (NAST) and received the prestigious “Nai Kirti Ratna” from Nai Publications.

In March–April 2026, she participated in the World Orchid Congress in Germany as a moderator and keynote speaker. She is now leading the organization of an International Orchid Symposium in Nepal in November 2026 — a first for the country, involving the Government of Nepal and multiple institutions.

Throughout her career, Prof. Dr. Pant has been a living example of the message she gives young Nepali researchers: the future of your science is here, in the mountains and forests you grew up in. Instead of joining the brain drain to foreign labs, she sees Gorkhapatra Ayurveda companies reaching out to her, a prestigious Korean company expressing interest, and WWF seeking collaboration.

She is married to senior neurosurgeon Dr. Basanta Pant, who has been her constant companion in both life and research — providing space for her Tissue Culture Lab at Annapurna Neuro Hospital. Together with their two sons and one daughter, she has balanced an extraordinary professional and personal life.