Dr Sanjeev Khosla, Director, CSIR-IMTECH, felicitating Dr T. Mohapatra on IMTECH Foundation Day
CSIR-Institute of Microbial Technology (IMTECH), Chandigarh, celebrated its 39th Foundation Day on 24 January 2023. On this occasion, the institute organised several events including the much-anticipated Foundation Day Lecture. Dr T. Mohapatra, Former Secretary, Department of Agricultural Research and Education, Govt of India and Director General, Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) delivered this year’s Foundation Day Lecture on ‘Food and Nutrition Security in India: Capitalizing on Agriculture 4.0’.
Dr Mohapatra who pioneered the field of “Molecular Plant Breeding” in India highlighted that ‘Agriculture 4.0’ is a part of the fourth wave of the industrial revolution, which proposes an ideal state of fully autonomous and optimised manufacturing in industries. His talk emphasised on the transition from manual to automatic to semi-autonomous to completely autonomous farming through the effective integration of physical and digital technology. He also gave a brief background on the agriculture revolution that has taken place in the last 70 years that has enabled food and nutrition security in India. Dr Mohapatra is credited for initiating Plant Genomics research in the country through the formulation and implementation of the Rice Genome Sequencing Project.
During his leadership at ICAR, the country realised revolution in the production of pulses and sugar, and more than 80 biofortified crop varieties were released to alleviate malnutrition. His research accomplishments include the development of the first high-yielding Basmati rice variety resistant to bacterial leaf blight through molecular marker-assisted selection, and physical mapping and genome sequencing of rice and tomato.
Dr Sanjeev Khosla, Director, CSIR-IMTECH, while welcoming the guests and faculty to IMTECH’s foundation day gave a status report of CSIR-IMTECH and apprised the audience of the institute’s achievements during the last year. He also lauded the efforts of scientists and researchers and exhorted them to focus on future research areas and building capacity in microbial genomics and metagenomics, microbiome biology, developing animal and 3D culture models for infectious disease research and providing microbial consortia for the bioremediation of waste including plastics.
Speaking at the occasion, Dr Khosla said, “A robust pipeline of world-class scientific and technology inputs is a key requirement for developing a sustainable ecosystem for Innovation. We at IMTECH, provide this eco-system not only by our portfolio of innovative technologies in the field of microbiology and biotech but also by supporting the start-ups through workshops and meetings to promote innovation and entrepreneurship in life sciences.”
As part of the celebrations, CSIR-IMTECH also observed ‘Open Day’ during which about 250 school students, graduates and the general public from in and around the tricity visited the Institute and interacted with scientists to get a firsthand account of various facets of microbiology and biotechnology. On this occasion, the Institute also felicitated its students for the best PhD thesis and best PhD presentation award 2022 with a certificate and cash award for their outstanding performances.
CSIR-IMTECH is a national centre for excellence in microbial sciences and was established in 1984 under the aegis of CSIR. IMTECH’s vision and mission are to create a translational ecosystem strengthened by fundamental discoveries and to address unmet healthcare and industrial needs with state-of-the-art processes and platforms.
