New Delhi, Nov 13, 2009: While assuring all the support from the Government to the innovators working in different areas of research, the union minister for science and technology Prithviraj Chavan said the government is looking at increasing the science funding from 1% to 2% of GDP in the next budget.

The minister was addressing the delegates at Sixth Solanaceae Genome Workshop (SOL 2009), organized by the University of Hyderabad and science ministry.

In his inaugural address, the minister said as 57% of India's population is dependent on agriculture, the sector is a highly focused area for further research on crops. He also said overexploitation of land since independence was one of the reasons for the decline in crop productivity. “The next green revolution could only happen if we concentrate on developing the means of achieving it mostly through plant biotechnology.” the minister stated while stressing to need for focus on Agri-biotech research,” Mr. Chavan said.

He was highly appreciative of SOL committee and the work being carried out in this regard. He empathized on the need to concentrate on food research in India as compared to fuel research in advanced countries. He assured the DBT members that he would be visiting all the major research institutes in coming days to see the progress and status of research. He said that he expects the delegates across the world to attend the SOL conference. He was hopeful that the workshop will be most productive among the all.

Dr Renu Swarup, Advisor, Department of Biotechnology said that DBT has been supportive of all the activities undertaken by SOL. While lauding the efforts of organizing committee and scientists, she said SOL is an excellent platform for the workshop and the response has been very good.

Dr Dani Zamir, International SOL Chair, while addressing the participants recalled that journey in this direction had started 5 years ago and the first phase of the project is complete. While speaking about the sequencing of genomes of tomato and Brinjal, he said, “I expect that soon all other genomes will also be sequenced on similar lines.” He was appreciative of Indian enthusiasm and support of govt. in this regard. He was hopeful that research will move at much faster pace.

Dr J.P Khurana Co- Chair, SOL Organizing committee in his speech said that funding from DBT has been a major boost in the research. While highlighting the importance of conference, he said, “it is very good to see that biodiversity, genomics, proteomics, bioinformatics, computational biology are being covered. and eight satellite sessions are being conducted in this regard.” Besides he spoke about the Delhi getting international exposure due to the SOL workshop.

Dr M.K Bhan, Secretary, Dept. of Biotechnology, highlighted the importance of plant genomics in his address. He spoke about the genomics being one of the fundamental tool in understanding the basic functions.

He while assuring the DBT support towards the plant biotechnology, he said, “ the DBT is committed to invest in the fundamental sciences and the plants come ahead of humans in this regard.” He said that plant genomics are related to the boosting of crop production and creating healthy crops available to everyone and thus caters to huge chunk of population in both developing as well as developed countries.

 

The talked about the importance of sharing the knowledge and the food crops being one of the area which needs collaborations and the need to create platform and cohesion and togetherness in real sense. He said that next 5 years would be utilized to invest and take the plant science forward.

Prof R.P Sharma, Co- Chair, SOL Organizing committee provided vote of thanks to the minister, DBT members, sponsors and delegates.

To consolidate India's foray in the functional and structural genomics domain for tomato which aims to improve tomato in relation to its water use efficiency, disease resistance increase in shelf life and better nutrition, Sixth Solanaceae Genome Workshop (SOL 2009) aims to provide boost to the agri-biotech sector in India.

The SOL 2009 is being attended by scientists from 20 countries that are participating in International SOL genome program. A total of 350 Indian and International scientists would discuss for six days different aspects of genomics including progress in tomato and potato genome sequencing, molecular breeding, increase in shelf life of produce, disease resistance to name a few. The scientists from Academia, Government Departments, seed and biotechnology Industry of India and abroad are participating in this workshop and would spend six days discussing to ways to make better tomato for human health and farmers.

The organizing of SOL 2009 is indication of India strength in the upcoming area of crop biotechnology, where India is emerging a major global partner in using genomics to improve tomato, potato and rice.