India will be among top 5 bio-manufacturing hubs by 2025: Jitendra Singh

India will be among the top five countries to be recognised as a global bio-manufacturing hub by 2025, Union minister Jitendra Singh said on Friday, noting that India's bio-economy is on way to achieve USD 150-billion target from the current USD 70 billion.

He was speaking here after releasing the Genetic Version of Indian rice and chickpea (DNA panArray) developed by National Institute of Plant Genome Research (NIPGR).

The Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) Science & Technology said India will be within the top five countries to be recognised as a Global Bio-manufacturing Hub by 2025.

"India's Bio-Economy is on way to achieve 150-billion-dollar target from the current 70 billion-dollar to contribute effectively to the Prime Minister's vision of a 5 trillion-dollar economy by 2024-25," he said.

Referring to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's 75th Independence Day Speech from the Red Fort, Singh said the roadmap for the next 25 years will be determined by scientific and technological innovations and scientific prowess in all walks of life and called upon young scientists to walk the talk.

He said, this will be possible through a very well-articulated vision, mission and goals, driven through a set of well-defined strategies and a clearly laid out implementation Action plan put forth by the government.

Singh said the two DNA chips for rice and chickpea, IndRA and IndiCA are the first Pan-Genome genotyping arrays in these two crops and will tap the huge potential of Indian plant biodiversity and genomic diversity towards food and nutritional security of the nation.