Innovative research projects up for display at Agharkar Research Institute tomorrow

“There are various such projects in different areas like biodiversity, palaeobiology, bioenergy, genetics and plant breeding, nanobioscience and others. These projects will be displayed at the exhibition,” said Dr Dhakephalkar.

Some of the key projects include ARI’s ‘BioStrawGas’ technology, which uses microbes to mitigate pollution and extract renewable energy. “The tech -transfer in this project has been made with GPS renewables, a clean fuel technology and engineering firm and what is important here is the biomethanation of rice straw without thermo-chemical pre-treatment. This is an eco-friendly and cost-effective process,” explained the ARI director.

“Utilization of agricultural wastes as biohydrogen feedstock can effectively turn waste into treasure and achieve the purposes of energy conservation and pollution reduction. This sustainable microbial process was developed for the biohydrogen production from rice straw,” said Dr Dhakephalkar adding that here, the tech-transfer has been made to KPIT Technologies.

Global Bio-India 2023 from Dec 4-6

Dr Rajesh Gokhale, Secretary of Department of Biotechnology, Union Ministry of Science and Technology, who will deliver the oration at the Founder’s Day event at ARI told The Indian Express that the biotechnology sector has grown and biotech startups are very important. An official readout said that biotech startups have grown 100 times in the last eight years from 522-odd startups in 2014 to 6300+ in 2023.

“We have also planned a mega event ‘Global Bio-India 2023’ from December 4 to 6 at New Delhi. This is an international congregation of biotechnology stakeholders, including regulatory bodies, central and state ministries,” said Dr Gokhale adding more than 1,500 startups, small and medium enterprises, innovators and entrepreneurs are set to participate in the event.