Hyderabad, India
February 18, 2008
Source:
The Hindu via
Checkbiotech
The leading scientific journal ‘Nature’
on Wednesday published a research paper by a scientists’ team
from the city-based Centre for
Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB) that spoke of a
breakthrough towards development of new plant breeding methods
for more yield in food crops.
At a press conference here on Thursday, CCMB Director Lalji
Singh announced that the breakthrough involved in identification
of gene ‘DYAD’ and said that the next step was to go about
devising a way of re-engineering it.
10 years
The decade-old work of the team led by Imran Siddiqi was a great
step forward in breeding food crops for far greater yields, he
said.
Dr. Singh said what this meant was that hybrid seeds could be
produced and plants grown for seeds that would retain the
original combination of genes of the parent plant with
high-yielding properties.
This also meant that when the technology was perfected, farmers
need not anymore buy hybrid seeds that could only be used once.
In his presentation, Dr. Siddiqi described ‘apomixis’ as the
formation of asexual seeds in plants and that it occurred in
about 400 known plant species.
It had two major components – ‘apomeiosis’, the avoidance of
meiosis leading to the formation of an unreduced female gamete
that retained the full genotype of the parent plant and
‘parthenogenesis, development of an embryo without fertilization
of the egg cell.
He said what they had achieved in 10 years of research was to
discover how ‘apomeiosis’ occurred and identifying the gene.
Patent
Responding to a question, Dr. Siddiqi said they had filed for a
patent and that it would primarily be with the
Council for Scientific and
Industrial Research (CSIR).
Once the technology was completely invented, it would be put to
use for the larger good of the farming community and not
commercialised as CSIR was a government organisation, he added.
“It has taken me and my students Maruthachalam Ravi and Mohan
P.A. Marimuthu, both of whom are now abroad, 10 years of work,”
Dr. Siddiqi summed up.
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