44th Foundation Day of ICAR-NBPGR Celebrated

ICAR-National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources (NBPGR) celebrated its 44th Foundation Day on August 3, 2020. The Foundation Day program was organized as a virtual event. The DDG (Crop Sciences), Dr TR Sharma was the Chief Guest and the ADG (Seeds) Dr DK Yadava was the Guest of Honour. Dr Kuldeep Singh, Director, ICAR-NBPGR, presented an overview of achievements of the institute in the last one year. On this occasion, the 7th Dr Harbhajan Singh Memorial Lecture on "Coupling DNA Fingerprinting and Chemical Fingerprinting to derive Best Germplasm for Medicinal Plant Cultivation" was delivered by Dr JLN Sastry, Chief Executive Officer, National Medicinal Plants Board, Ministry of Ayush, Government of India.
On the occasion, a couple of publications were released. The Guidelines for the NHCP Users, authored by Drs Anjula Pandey, K Pradheep, RK Pamarthi and SP Ahlawat, developed to facilitate the herbarium indenters for easy referral and to avail the services provided by the state-of-art facility. A booklet Italian Millet and Little Millet Landraces of North Coastal Andhra Pradesh, authored by Shivraj et al., on the various landraces of little millet and Italian millet with their brief description and colourful photographs brought out under the RKVY project In-situ Management of Indigenous Crop Diversity for Improved Market Access by Value Addition in Rainfed and High-Altitude Tribal Areas through Community Managed Seed Systems.
A web app G2G (Genebank to GenBank) developed under ICAR National Fellow project on PGR Informatics was inaugurated by Dr TR Sharma. G2G links information on genomic resources of crop plants available in the GenBank with associated plant genetic resources belonging to 252 countries conserved in 251 genebanks located in 78 countries around the world belonging to 79 crop species- to genebanks from where the seeds/ propagules can be accessed legitimately as per extant national and international regulatory framework. G2G presents a common platform to access seekers as well as access providers to enhance utilization of germplasm and associated knowledge. It is also expected to help genebanks track the genetic resources used in generating genomic resources and to facilitate benefit sharing in case of commercial use, without compromising on the ease of access and use by researchers.
The DDG (CS) in his address appreciated the work undertaken by the Bureau and said that on foundation day, the staff needs to introspect on the work already done and set fresh priorities for the next year. He encouraged the staff to continue its good work in the years to come with greater emphasis on publication in peer-reviewed journals.
The event was also broadcast live on YouTube channel of NBPGR.

(Source: PME Cell, ICAR-NBPGR)