Manoj Prasad was born on 16 December 1970 in Ballia in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.[2] After completing early schooling at Pannalal Institution in Kalyani, West Bengal, he pursued he graduated with honours in science from Ramakrishna Mission Vivekananda Centenary College, Kolkata in 1992 and secured a master's degree from the prestigious University College of Science campus of University of Calcutta in 1994.[3] Subsequently, he did his doctoral research at the same university from where he earned a PhD in 1999. His career started as a research fellow at the Chaudhary Charan Singh University, Meerut in 1998 and in 2000, he moved to Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research (IPK), Gatersleben as a post-doctoral research fellow where he stayed until 2003.[4] Returning to India, he joined the National Institute of Plant Genome Research (NIPGR), New Delhi in 2004 as a staff scientist Grade III and continued to serve the institute as a Staff Scientist Grade VI until October 2023.[5] In November 2023 he became full time Professor in Department of Genetics at Delhi University.[6]
Prasad focuses his studies on crop science and his laboratory at NIPGR is involved in the studies related to salt and drought stress as well as abiotic stress in foxtail millet (Setaria italica) and genetic studies of tomato leaf curl virus (ToLCV).[4] His studies have been documented by way of a number of articles[8][note 1] and ResearchGate, an online repository of scientific articles has listed 219 of them.[9] He edited the book, The Foxtail Millet Genome,[10] and has contributed chapters to books published by others.[11]