Role of Plant Biotechnology in Agriculture

Read this article to learn about the role of plant biotechnology in agriculture.

India is an agricultural country and its economy is largely dependent on agriculture. Therefore, technological developments in the agriculture sector have a direct impact on country’s economy.

The abundance of genetic base (biodiversity), diverse agro-climatic zones and highly qualified man-power offer a potential scope for technological advances in agricultural biotechnology. India has been traditionally a leading exporter of primary agricultural produce such as tea, coffee, rubber, cardamom, and cotton and several spices, flavoring, aromatic and medicinal plants.

This status is declining due to low productivity, non-competitive prices and sometimes, poor quality of the material. Therefore, our urgent need to improve plant cultivars for quality and quantity is required using biotechnological methods. Most of the agricultural produce in India is produced as rain fed crops. The shortage of healthy seeds/planting material and lack of disease resistant clones have often been affecting the agricultural economy. Large scale production of elite clones through micro-propagation or somatic embryogenesis, production of disease free clones and improvement of varieties through cellular, molecular and conventional breeding methods hold the promise of improving some of the problems of Indian agriculture, horticulture and forestry.

Scope for Development:

i. Diverse Agro-climatic Regions:

India has rich resources of land spread over diverse agro-climatic zones that have the potential to produce a wide variety of agricultural and commercially high value crops. It has large biodiversity, germplasm of rare ornamentals and medicinal plants, most of them native to this continent. Therefore, India offers many advantages over other countries in the world.

ii. Forest Wealth:

The native forests all over the country are well known for their richness and variety in foliage and ornamental plants. These plants can be propagated by tissue culture method and introduced in the market.

iii. Different Climatic Zones:

In India all the climatic zones, from temperate to tropical are available. Therefore, any plant growing in any climate can be multiplied and grown in the country. On the same time, cool climatic zones are less expensive for micro-propagation work as extensive air conditioning for plant growth is not required.

iv. Scientific Talent:

In India, the scientific talent and the operational skills of the people is at par with the best in the world. The salaries are low in India. This makes it an ideal place for production facility and that is why, some companies have been shifted to India from USA and Europe. It is worth mentioning here that anther and pollen culture for haploids and in-vitro fertilization like plant biotechnologies were discovered in India. Embryo culture and rescue of hybrid embryo is of quite significance in this aspect.

Propagation of plants through tissue culture has become an important and popular technique to multiply crops that are otherwise difficult to propagate conventionally by seeds and/or vegetative methods. Differentiated cells or organs are manipulated to give rise to multiple copies of the parent plant under optimum aseptic environmental conditions and appropriate stimuli. It offers several advantages over conventional propagation methods such as rapid multiplication of valuable genotypes, rapid improvement of crop plants, production of disease and virus free plants, production throughout the year possible, germplasm conservation and easy transport and transfer (international) of material (in vitro material is contamination free).

There are several methods developed in last 3 decades for vegetative multiplication of plant species involving axillary budding, adventitious budding, somatic embryogenesis and organogenesis from callus cultures. In fact, the genetic stability of the plant copies (population) produced is likely to vary according to the procedure chosen. However, these methods have certain limitations.

Problems Associated with Agricultural Biotechnology:

Development and use of any technology is dependable on infra-structural facility and simultaneous development of other related technologies. Agricultural biotechnology requires infrastructure like electricity, air-conditioned rapid transport system, skilled labour and related biotechnology like innovative and novel packaging material, plastic ware and glass appliances etc.

Followings are major hurdles:

(a) Industry is a capital intensive (requires elaborate establishment money).

(b) Seasonal activity with peak demand; delivery of plant material at one time requires large facility which may be underutilized at other times.

(c) High production cost applicable to selected crop plants with established protocols for multiplication.

(d) Management of personnel and organization of work schedule in chain oriented manner.

(e) Contamination problem adds a big cost factor.

(f) Soma clonal variation at large multiplication rate.

In context of India, on export scene, lack of variety of packing material at affordable price, high air freights, unsuitable air connections, lengthy phytosanitory, custom and export documentation formalities make this non-traditional, highly perishable export commodity less attractive as compared to potential it has. However, recently the government of India has set up suitable cargo-handling cold storage facility at New Delhi and Bangalore for export of biotech products.

Commercialization:

Commercialization of agricultural biotechnology began in India in real sense in 1987 when various private sector companies adopted this technology as a means of increasing the productivity of their primary produces or as a part of their diversification programme. This includes A.V. Thomas group of companies, Indo-American Hybrid seeds (IAHS), Hindustan Lever, Tata Tea, Unicorn Biotech, Nath seeds, RP Goenka Enterprises, India Tobacco company, Maharashtra Hybrid Seeds Company, Hindustan Agrigenetics Ltd. and some others.

The first professionally managed commercial plant tissue culture unit in the country was set up in 1987-88 by A.V. Thomas, at Cochin in export processing zone, and remained one of the largest in Asia and only one of its kind in India (producing 190 million plants in 1996), until IAHS began production in its Bangalore based unit. IAHS has 48 Laminar flow work stations, hundred growth rooms (each can accommodate 400,000 culture at one time) and a green house of 30,000 sq. ft. (2790 sq m) with most advanced equipment such as automatic shade system, fogging, blackout and irrigation systems, and movable benches for hardening of tissue culture plants.

Subsequently, advancement in commercialization of plant tissue culture and acceptance of plantlets raised through tissue culture have led to continued exponential growth within the industry in terms of number of new units as well as number of plants produced by these units (Table 27.4).

Most of these units are set up with foreign know how. Most of our commercial units prefer to seek the entire technology package on a turn-key basis. The major foreign collaborators (mostly with buy back arrangements) are M/S Cultiss, Holland; M/S Green Teek, Holland; M/S Microplants Ltd., UK; Centre de Research Agronomique, Belgium; Planex, Australia; and Agrobio, France etc.

Indo-American Hybrid Seeds (IAHS), A.V. Thomas & Co., Harrisons Malayam Ltd., Godrej Plant Biotech Ltd. and SPIC have established ultramodern micro-propagation facilities. IAHS and A.V. Thomas have exported millions of tissue cultured plants to Europe and released several lakhs banana and cardamon plantlets to farmers in domestic market. A.V. Thomas have developed a cardamon variety with yield of 250 kg/hectare as compared to normal 70 kg/hectare and can be cropped in two years instead of usual three years.

A.V. Thomas has also developed high glucovanillin producing and early flowering vanilla plants through tissue culture. Cost effective micro-propagation system has also been developed in tea and coffee. IAHS has won several contracts from the Netherlands, UK, and Denmark to develop new plant varieties by somatic hybridization, selection of somaclonal variants, endosperm culture, in vitro pollination and embryo rescue method in combination with conventional plant breeding.

IAHS is providing service for screening plants for 40 viruses, 2 viroids and several bacterial, fungal and mycoplasmal diseases for 19 ornamental and 26 horticultural and agricultural crops. This company had exported cut flowers worth Rs. 14 million to Holland, Denmark and UK in 1991.

Beena Nursery (P) Ltd., Trivandrum offers high quality and disease free plantlets of orchids suitable for the cut flower industry. Hindustan Lever Ltd, Mumbai is involved in clonal multiplication of high yielding cultivars of plantation crops such as cardamon through meristem culture, virus-free micro-tubers of potato. It has also designed a bioreactor to scale-up the micro-tuber production. Godrej plant Biotech Ltd. (earlier known as Unicorn Biotech), multiply trees and plants by apical and axillary meristems and somatic embryogenesis.

Micro-propagation protocols for 2 cultivars of strawberry suitable for cultivation in tropical plains and conventional hilly regions have been developed. The company sold over 2 lakhs plants to farmers in Maharashtra, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh during 1992-94.

Micro-propagated banana, Chrysanthemum, rose, carnation and foliage ornamental plants are not only being produced at large scale but also being exported. Dhainpur Sugar Mills, Dhampur and EID Parry, Chennai are involved in production of virus-free sugarcane through tissue culture.

SPIC science foundation, Chennai have introduced sex-typed female papaya plants in commercial tissue culture market for the first time in India. SPIC Agro-biotech centre is working on coffee, banana, potato, sunflower, rose, gerbera, orchids and tree species (Callistemon, Simarouba, jack fruit, mango and date palm).

National Agricultural and Scientific Research foundation, Calcutta is engaged in large scale production of Musa, Spathiphyllum, Anthurium, Elettaria and orchids. It has already developed protocols for tea, jojoba, lilies, gladiolus, gerbera, Ficus and Philodendron. In all there are 75 units of small, medium and large capacity, capable of producing 190 million plants per annum. The major 4 units are producing 15-25 million plants per annum. The others are capable of producing plants from 1-10 million per annum.

Plants Produced:

Indian units are currently producing fruit crops, forest trees, ornamental (foliage and flowering plants), vegetative crops and plantation crops (Table 27.5). The major emphasis is on the production of ornamentals.

Governmental Efforts:

The Indian Government has identified micro propagation of plants through tissue culture as an industrial activity under Industrial (Development and Research) act, of 1951 which was made effective in 1991. The units engaged in floriculture can avail duty free imports under export oriented units (EOU)/ export processing zone (EPZ) scheme even if they sell 50% in domestic market and export the remaining 50%. The import duty on live trees, plants, bulbs, roots, cut flowers as well as ornamental and foliage plants has been reduced from 55% to 10%.

Import duty on seed development machinery for soil preparation, greenhouses, pre-cooling unit and refrigerated transport units has been reduced to 25%. A subsidy on air-freight to a maximum of 25% has been allowed for export of cut flowers and tissue culture plants. Government of India has formed National Board of Biotechnology in 1982 to promote research and development work in the area of Biotechnology in the country. Since then several well defined programmes of National priorities began in the country through National Institutes and Universities.

Later on, Department of Biotechnology (DBT) was set up in February 1986 for better functioning under the Ministry of Science and Technology. This department is planning, promoting and coordinating biotechnological programmes in the country. DBT has set up task forces in various biotechnological areas. The research projects funded by DBT are in various research themes like micro-propagation for fuel, fodder and biomass, medicinal and endangered plant propagation, protoplasts culture and genetic engineering, and crop improvement.

Plant species have been identified for Research and Development programmes. Two pilot plants for micro-propagation have been set up at National Chemical Laboratory, Poona and Tata Energy Research Institute, Delhi. Government of India has liberalized rules for import of basic materials, provides tax exemptions and subsidies on air freight of plants raised through tissue culture, cold storage facilities have been created at Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore for storage of consignment awaiting shipment. Tissue culture consignments are given quarantine clearance within 6 hours. Due to these reasons, Indian export of floriculture products increased from Rs. 738 lakhs in 1990-91 to Rs. 1139 lakhs in 1991-92.