The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Coimbatore News : `Biotechnology has helped farmers'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Feb 04, 2005

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Coimbatore

`Biotechnology has helped farmers'

By Our Staff Reporter

COIMBATORE, FEB. 3. In recent years, research results from biotechnological procedures are becoming quite precise, making it possible to formulate reliable practical applications, the Vice- Chancellor, Tamil Nadu Veterinary and Animal Sciences University (TANUVAS), N. Balaraman, said here recently.

Scientific advance

Inaugurating a seminar on trends in industrial biotechnology at the Kumaraguru College of Technology (KCT), Prof. Balaraman said that the production and processing aspects of biotechnology had enabled farmers to use several scientific advances to improve agriculture.

Using tissue culture, scientists could turn somatic or stem cells that had not evolved, into whole organisms or parts of the body. Transgenic methods could generate products by changing the genetic structure.

Experts in biotechnology had been able to produce in a very short time, what might otherwise have taken several years using conventional technology. Tissue culture plants were now easy to propagate using the latest techniques.

He said that insulin production had been stepped up through biotechnological processes and had come as a boon to diabetes patients who depended on a steady supply of the material to help them live a normal life.

Half the production of milk in the country came from the buffalo, and researchers had succeeded in producing superior varieties of cheese by using novel methods in genomics.

Presiding over the function, the Joint Correspondent, A. Selvakumar, said that industrial biotechnology or "white technology" was clean and sustainable, and had made greater impact than "red technology" (health care) or "green technology" (plants).

With more efficient processes, there was a cleaner environment and less wastage.

About 250 students, faculty and professionals from all over the country participated in the two-day seminar.

There were nine lectures by experts from Madurai Kamaraj University, Anna University, Annamalai University, University of Madras and Pondicherry University.

The discussions centred on bioinformatics, genetic engineering, recombinant proteins, vaccines and other industrially important products.

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