The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), in association with the South Asia Biosafety Programme (SABP) and the Biotech Consortium India Limited (BCIL), is implementing a Programme on Biosafety Awareness and Compliance Readiness. The objective of the programme is to improve ICAR’s institutional capacity in biosafety. As ICAR is a large organization comprised of a network of 100 institutes and 53 agricultural universities spread throughout the country, the programme is presently being undertaken as a pilot project focusing on a sub-set of institutes having extensive research portfolios that include genetic engineering. The pilot project is being executed over 18 months, and then will be reviewed and scaled up throughout the entire ICAR organization.
Ten institutions selected to participate in the pilot project, due to their active engagement in research in agricultural biotechnology are:
- Central Institute for Cotton Research (CICR), Nagpur
- Central Potato Research Institute (CPRI), Shimla
- Directorate of Rapeseed-Mustard Research (DRMR), Bharatpur
- Indian Institute of Horticultural Research (IIHR), Bangalore
- Indian Institute of Millets Research (IIMR), Hyderabad
- Indian Institute of Oilseeds Research (IIOR), Hyderabad
- Indian Institute of Pulses Research (IIPR), Kanpur
- Indian Institute of Rice Research (IIRR), Hyderabad
- Indian Institute of Vegetable Research (IIVR), Varanasi
- National Research Centre on Plant Biotechnology (NRCPB), New Delhi
The programme is based on a “Train the trainers” approach. Two officers from each of the institutions have been nominated as Institutional Biosafety Officers (IBOs). These officers are being extensively trained through a series of workshops, training programmes, e-learning modules, etc. These officers, in association with national and international experts, will coordinate biosafety training within each institution.
To know about who the IBOs are, click here