Avesthagen, a Bangalore-based company working on preventive and personalised healthcare, has got a patent registered in the US for its technology to make rice crops resistant to environmental stresses such as drought, salinity and temperature extremes.

The company's breakthrough was targeting the manganese super-oxidase dismutase (MnSOD) gene, the site of photosynthesis in plants.

According to Ms Villoo Morawala Patell, the founder, and chairman and managing director of Avesthagen, “We constantly aim to provide breakthrough solutions that are advantageous to the farmers and consumers. I acknowledge the Rockefeller Foundation, NCBS-TIFR and VIB for their help and support.”

“This gives the company significant freedom to operate in the global agricultural biotech industry,” she added.

Invention

The way to increase productivity in the face of declining water availability, cultivable area and climate change is the use of biotech techniques that would allow rice and other crops to grow and provide satisfactory yields under stressed conditions.

At 450 million tonnes, rice is one of the most important cereal crops globally, especially in the densely populated Asian region. Rice normally requires heavy irrigation. By 2050, the global cereal supplies need to increase by 70 per cent from 2,250 million tonnes currently to about 4,000 million tonnes to feed a 9-billion population.

“Biotech traits/techniques normally take seven to eight years to be incorporated into commercial varieties and offer an effective method to mitigate specific problems,” explained Ms Patell.

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