Plant biotechnology in India: a pointer to the future

Abstract

India’s biotechnology industry is widely considered as nascent and embryonic in comparison to the country’s IT sector. The reality is different if one considers the rapid pace at which biotechnology policies have evolved in the country since the mid-1980s. Equally noteworthy has been the positive manner in which the industry has responded to the policies in the 1990s. India’s biotech industry has made rapid progress in R&D in frontier areas namely, monoclonal anti bodies, molecular markers, assisted plant breeding, r-DNA, bio-informatics and marine biotechnology. Development and commercialisation of novel biotech products do not however match the progress in R&D. This paper analyses the reasons for this situation and proceeds to consider ways by which the problems can be overcome