1. MISSION

The overall mission of the Genomics laboratory is the conduct research in functional genomics of tree species and elucidate molecular mechanisms during host-pathogen/pest interaction, wood development, adventitious rooting, hormonal signaling and other developmental traits using advanced tools.

2. INFRASTRUCTURE

The present infrastructure facility in the Genomics laboratory houses all basic equipments required to conduct research in Genomics including a culture facility, thermal cycler, incubator, water baths, deep freezers (-800C), centrifuges,  basic and high throughput electrophoretic units, hybridization array system and Phast and FPLC systems. In future the laboratory aims to up-grade the infrastructure with inclusion of facilities for transcriptomics using NGS platform.

3. Assets acquired from Department of Biotechnology funded projects

    Project Title: Assessment of adaptive genetic diversity in teak and sandalwood to guide conservation and genetic improvement efforts.

    Project No.: BT/PR29193/FCB/125/10/2018

    Name and description of the Fixed Assets: Nanopore Sequencing System and Qubit Fluorometer

4. HRD  (TEMPORARY & PERMANENT STAFFS)

The laboratory has a permanent Research Assistant Grade II and several research scholars and field assistant.  Training of the permanent staff to enable handling of equipments and basic experiments was imparted in-house. Efforts will be made in future to empower the staff to handle experiments on proteins.

5. FINANCIAL RESOURCING

Presently, the laboratory houses three DBT funded project and one ICFRE funded project with total budget outlay of  `105.55 lakhs. In future, projects aiming on transcriptomics will be submitted to national and international agencies for financial support.

6. PARTNERS
 

• INDUSTRIAL

Industrial partnership with paper and pulp industries and department collaboration with SFDs are in place to transfer research results to the stake holders.
Further,  under the program on "Commercialization of Technologies" we are collaborating with Biotech Consortium of India Ltd (BCIL), New Delhi to commercialize the RNA isolation technology.

• ACADEMIC

Academic partners in our program include both national and international institutes including KAU, FRI and CSIRO, Australia. Further, under the DBT-CREST Award, a training is envisaged in Texas A&M laboratory.

7. PROFESSIONAL LEADERSHIP

The Genomics laboratory has the distinction in conducting research on advanced areas of forest biotechnology including diagnostic and selection markers, novel proteins, molecular host-pathogen interaction and wood development.  The research results are published in impact factor journals of national and international repute. Research findings were also presented in international conferences/ symposium at Malaysia, Argentina and South Korea.

8. EXTENSION

Hands on training is imparted to students, researchers and junior scientists on basic areas of molecular biology under project / training mode.