THRISSUR: The new commercial micropropagation unit attached to the Centre for Plant Biotechnology and Molecular Biology (CPBMB) under Kerala Agricultural University (KAU) will be inaugurated on Monday.
The unit, which will be inaugurated by KAU Vice-Chancellor P Rajendran, is expected to ensure large-scale availability of quality TC planting material as per National Certification System for Tissue Culture Plants (NCS-TCP) and capacity building of entrepreneurs in commercial micropropagation. The inaugural function will be presided over by research director T R Gopalakrishnan.
The CPBMB is the ‘Lead Centre’ and all the micropropagation units functioning under the network project on Commercial micro propagation of high demand high value crops as per National Certification System for Tissue Culture Plants. The lead centre is validating and perfecting the protocols for commercial exploitation and the same is shared among the participating centres.
The centre provides training to entrepreneurs and gives technical advice to the participating centres and is coordinating the production schedule. The network project gives technical support to BMFC, Kazhakoottam, under the Department of Agriculture for validation of protocols and trouble shooting.
Though plant Tissue Culture Technology offers great promise for the production of disease free and true to type planting material through micropropagation techniques, a certification programme for the tissue culture plants is imperative since inadvertent micropropagation of virus-infected plants will not only result in its poor performance, but also in undesirable spread of viruses.
Also, failure to use prescribed standard protocols will result in variations in the plants produced. This is an area of great concern and requires a well-structured system to provide support to the tissue culture industry for the commercialisation of virus free and high quality planting material.
The Department of Biotechnology, New Delhi, is giving emphasis for the National Certification System for Tissue Culture Plants (NCS-TCP) for production of quality planting material.
The new commercial micropropagation unit will help augment not only the production of tissue culture planting materials but quality assurance of such products from various centres.
There are 10 centres in the network project on micropropagation, eight production centres and two quality evaluation units. The production centres are CPBMB, Vellanikkara (Lead Centre), BRS, Kannara, RRS, Vyttila, CoA, Padannakkad, RARS, Pattambi, KVK, Thrissur, PPNMU, Vellanikkara, ARS, Mannuthy and ARS, Anakayam.
The quality evaluation units are CPBMB, Vellanikkara and CoA Vellayani.