Metahelix subsidiary starts operations in Hyderabad

It has already in its basket 16 hybrid varieties of seeds of crops like cotton, rice and sunflower, and vegetables like lady's finger, chilli, cabbage, tomato, beetroot, cauliflower and watermelon.

The company has already successfully tested these seeds in Andhra Pradesh, he said, adding that the company would soon sign an MoU with the state agriculture department. At present, a state-wide marketing network is being put in place, he said.

The parent company, Metahelix, has embarked on research in the areas of Bt varieties of cotton, rice, sunflower etc. The first product is likely to be launched in the next four years.

Besides being involved in scientific consulting, application software and product development in the emerging areas of life science informatics and genomics, the company is also into contract research. It has bagged a major project in functional genomics from Via Lactia of New Zealand, said its managing director K K Narayanan.

The main business area of the company is gene discovery for agronomic and nutritional enhancement of food and commercial crops. Set up in 2000 by five scientist-turned-entrepreneurs, the company has received venture capital and organisational support from Infosys Technologies co-founder N S Raghavan. An amount of over Rs 9 crore has so far been spent on research facilities and personnel.

Narayanan, a plant molecular biologist and breeder, told Business Standard that the company planned to build informatics and gene discovery capabilities to discover and develop genes to create value throughout the agri-feed, food, fibre and fuel value chain.

It is also venturing into biotech and genomic fields to improve productivity and nutritional attributes of crops and vegetables not only in India but in other developing countries as well.

Stating that conventional plant breeding was limited by reproductive barriers Narayanan said genetic transformation with bacteria as a source was being used world over for insect, fungal and virus resistance and shelf-life enhancement.

Over 42 million hectares of land has so far been covered by various transgenic varieties of crops. On the concerns over genetically-modified food, he said the right technology which was geographic-specific would give no cause for worry.

In this regard, he pointed to the gaps in plant breeding programmes due to the limited use of molecular marker-assisted protocols in crop improvement.

On the problems seed companies faced in protecting their germplasm from being pirated, he urged that the government adopt the plant variety protection bill to deal with piracy related issues.

Molecular fingerprinting would establish the true varietal identity of the plant material. Seeds which are not subjected to genetic purity testing could pose risks to environment and health, he said.