Agri biotech park at Icrisat

The International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (Icrisat) today signed an MoU with the Andhra Pradesh government to jointly promote Agri-Biotech Park at its Patancheru campus on the outskirts of the city. The park is being set up under the Genome Valley project, a biotechnology initiative of the state government,

The Agri-Biotech Park is promoted to attract world-class agri-biotech companies and foundations to establish their R&D units. Icrisat has allocated about 200 acres of land for the biotech park, while the Department of Science and Technology (DST) of the Government of India granted $ 6 million to set up an incubator facility in the park.

The Bangalore-based Avesthagen is the first company to set up its facility at Agri-Biotech park to offer quality assurance services for the agricultural product companies.

The MoU was formally signed by William D Dar, the director-general of Icrisat, and B P Acharya, the secretary (industries and commerce), in the presence of B Gopalakrishna Reddy, the minister for small-scale industries and biotechnology.

"The signing of the MoU is a significant milestone in the institute's initiative to build partnerships with the state government. We are privileged to contribute to the government's vision of fostering biotechnology in the state," Dar said on the occasion.

The park would provide investors an opportunity to tap into Icrisat's upstream research expertise as well as its world-class infrastructure, he added.

Acharya said that Icrisat which had sound research facilities and about 3,000-acre campus for field trials would be greatly useful to the units coming up at the agri-biotech park.

Several companies were keen to set up their units at the park. The facilities at Icrisat include applied genomics lab, genetic transformation lab, bioinformatics and computational genomics facility, intellectual property management office and the technology innovation centre.