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`Medicinal value of rice varieties yet to be exploited'

By Our Special Correspondent

CHENNAI NOV. 29. "India has a host of rice varieties of medicinal value, which must be fully exploited. If properly researched and developed, the varieties can be used as valuable infant food. At present, varieties such as `Navara' are being used practitioners of Ayurveda to cure illness," M.S.Swaminathan, Chairman, MSSR Foundation, said today.

Delivering the Prof. M.S.Mani Memorial Lecture on `Biodiversity in Agro eco-systems', organised by the Committee on Science and Technology in Developing Countries here, Dr. Swaminathan stressed the need for multiple micro-enterprises to usher in rural prosperity.

The country needed banks with a difference.

Setting up a community-managed gene bank, seed bank, water bank and grain bank in rural areas would go a long way in ensuring food security system in remote areas. Emphasising the need for an evergreen revolution to produce more food from less land and with less water without endangering ecological assets, Dr.Swaminathan said eco-friendly technologies, which could provide job opportunities in the rural areas should be promoted.

The technologies should promote more jobs and not reduce jobs.

Speaking on biotechnological tools to develop new crops, he said mangroves offered excellent genetic material to develop salt-resistant crops.

Similarly `Prosopis juliflora', dry land trees, found in drought-prone areas, such as Ramanathapuram, offered valuable genes for drought tolerance, which could be incorporated into different new crop varieties for arid zones.

The MSSR Foundation was planning to organise an international conference on biotechnology and organic agriculture early next year.

Treatment for hepatitis B

The Madras University Vice-Chancellor, S.P.Thiagarajan, speaking on `Microbiology and biotechnology', said a drug derived from a medicinal plant (phyllanthus species) was used to treat hepatitis B and C and had been patented in four countries and patent in 11 other countries was awaited.

J.S. Bentur of the Directorate of Rice Research, Hyderabad, said breeding and cultivating resistant rice varieties should be the main approach in India to manage `Asian rice gall midge pest', a dreaded pest.

Ecological strategies such as gene deployment patents must be seriously considered if the country had to achieve the "elusive goal" of durable resistance to the pest.

T.N. Ananthakrishnan of COSTED said biodiversity being the feedstock for biotechnology an understanding of the multidimensional aspects of agro biodiversity became significant.

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