The Department of Biotechnology today organised a meeting with stakeholders to spread awareness about opportunities and potential of plant tissue culture.
The event, organised by Biotech Consortium India Limited under the department, focused on the opportunities under the National Certification System for Tissue Culture Raised Plants (NCS-TCP) which is aimed at ensuring production and distribution of quality tissue culture planting materials.
Realising the potential of plant tissue culture to revolutionise the growth of agriculture in India, the Department of Biotechnology introduced NCS-TCP in 2006 with the objective of mentoring the tissue culture companies for production and distribution of disease-free and high quality tissue culture plants.
NCS-TCP has made a substantial impact since its inception a decade ago. Since then, 96 companies have been recognised and five test laboratories and two referral centres have been accredited under this system.
"It is important to note that there has been no major virus outbreak in the last 10 years since the inception of NCS-TCP," the Department of Biotechnology, under the Ministry of Science and Technology, said in a statement.
So far, around 80 million tissue culture plants have been certified through this system.
"Being an agrarian-based economy, we need to streamline our expertise in the fields of biotechnology and innovation to improve our agricultural proficiency," said Y S Chowdary, Minister of State for Science and Technology.
With increasing demand for agricultural, forestry, plantation and horticulture crops, the demand for high-quality, high-yielding and disease-free planting stock has increased significantly over the past two decades.
Plant tissue culture has emerged as an important biotechnology and commercially viable tool to multiply elite varieties of high-quality, disease-free and high-yielding plants rapidly in the laboratory irrespective of the season of the year.
At present, there are around 200 commercial tissue culture companies in India with gross installed production capacity of about 500 million plantlets per annum. The industry witnesses an actual production of approximately 350 million plants.
Banana, potato, sugarcane, apple, pineapple, strawberry, gerbera, anthurium, lillium, orchids, bamboo, date palm, teak and pomegranate are some of the major plants tissue cultured in India.
"The unifying vision of increasing crop yield and
improving the lives of farmers and the general populace drive our efforts in the Department of Biotechnology and the Department of Agriculture.
"Through mentorship and guidance to tissue culture companies through NCS-TCP, we are looking to significantly improve our agricultural production to ensure food security in the country," said K Vijay Raghavan, Secretary of the Department of Biotechnology.
The plant tissue culture market in India is estimated at Rs 500 crore. In spite of the programme not being mandatory for the tissue culture industry, within a short period since its implementation, over 90 per cent of tissue culture companies are part of the programme, the statement said.
