New technology to reduce cost, time of research, commercialised

Smaller scientific research institutes to benefit

The Institute of Forest Genetics and Tree Breeding (IFGTB) here has developed a new technology that will significantly reduce the cost and time of research on plant tissues. It has come up with a cost-effective but highly efficient protocol to isolate nucleic acid from a tree tissue to extract the DNA and RNA, the fundamental requirements for molecular biological studies and research in plants.

This technology could enable smaller institutes to carry out scientific research projects that were hitherto unaffordable for them.

The institute has entered into a tripartite agreement with Biotech Consortium India Limited (BCIL), a firm promoted by the Centre’s Department of Science and Technology which assessed the technology and declared it as viable for commercialisation, and Rapid Genomics Solutions, a Coimbatore-based private research and development company that will market the technology.

IFGTB director N. Krishna Kumar, on Thursday, signed a memorandum of agreement with both these firms in the presence of S.K. Viswanath, general manager (marketing) of Rapid Genomics Solutions and T.P. Raghunath, group co-ordinator (research) of IFGTB. Modhumita Das Gupta, the IFGTB scientist who developed this technology with Radha Veluthakkal, who was a research scholar in IFGTB, said that the existing methods took nearly a day and a half to isolate the nucleic acid and involved the use of bio-hazardous material and high-end equipment such as ultracentrifuge.

This new technology, she said, could produce the result just about in an hour and a half using simple equipment that did not require hazardous substances. The cost could be reduced at least by ten times compared to existing methods. This technology could be fit into existing equipment. Further, this process was simple and would yield un-degraded RNA and DNA.

This was perhaps the only technology in country that was designed to test tree tissues. Now, the kits used for crops and plants were being used to test tree samples, she said.

Rapid Genomics Solutions, to which this technology has been transferred, will manufacture the kits and market it.

Mr. Viswanath of Rapid Genomics, said that almost 100 per cent of the testing kit for trees was imported now. This domestic technology can reduce costs significantly and increase access to more firms. While the testing was done manually now, plans were afoot to automate the process.

Mr. Krishna Kumar, said that this project was conceived in 2009 and developed by 2011, when the initiative for commercialisation was taken up and completed now. He expected the commercial kits of this technology to hit the market in nine months.