NRC and AAFC sign MOUs with India's Department of Biotechnology

The National Research Council (NRC) and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (AAFC) have signed separate agri-biotech MOUs with India's Department of Biotechnology (DBT) to strengthen research ties between the two nations and plan for future collaborative projects The MOUs were signed December 6 in Bangalore and although they are separate, they may pave the way for a three-way collaboration between India, AAFC and NRC.

The MOUs target food production and processing as well as bio-pesticides and bio-fertilizers, function and nutraceutical foods, agri-biotech, biomass utilization, water quality, sustainable alternative energy and environmental technologies. It is hoped that the resulting research activity will eventually involve industry.

The NRC-DBT MOU was signed by NRC VP life sciences, Dr Roman Szumski and BDT senior advisor Dr S. Natesh.

NRC also used the MOU signing to further its participation in the development of Knowledge City, a 350-acre public-private partnership in Mohali that will accommodate a number of Indian research institutes and a 15-acre agri-food cluster including scale-up facilities. Knowledge City is directly modelled on the NRCs Plant Biotechnology Institute (PBI) in Saskatoon and PBI DG Dr Kutty Kartha has been involved in its design from the beginning.

NRC's involvement in India gathered momentum following a 2003 mission led by then president Dr Arthur Carty, who scoped out commonalities between the two nations and identified biotechnology as a key area for collaboration.

"This MOU is the first foray with India at the corporate level to see where we can go," says Melanie Cullins, NRC's director of international relations. "Usually we have dealt with India on a researcher-to-researcher or institute-to-institute level but this is a lager agreement covering life sciences and extending into information technology."

The AAFC-DBT MOU was signed by AAFC DM Leonard Edwards and DBT secretary Dr M.K. Khan, who visited the NRC's PBI last year and met with NRC president Dr Pierre Coulombe.

"India is increasing its science capacity and putting priority on food production. There's a gap between demand and supply and technology cooperation is part of the solution," says Dr Yvon Martel, chief scientist of AAFC's three-year-old international scientific cooperation bureau. "India is looking to Canada, the US, the UK and others for expertise in food production."

Martel says his department now has more than 50 MOUs with other countries, reinforcing a trend towards global research collaboration. Preliminary discussions are underway to strike an MOU with Brazil.

"It's becoming much easier. The first line of collaboration is with published material. Then it moves into private knowledge and intellectual property agreements," he says. "There are many aspects of science that are wide open so we are increasing international collaboration. Many other countries are doing the same."

CANET 4 LINK

Collaboration could be greatly enhanced with the linkage of Canada's and India's broadband research networks. CAnet 4 is now connected to the Indian research and education network (ERNet) through the trans-European research and education network, GEANT2, which recently hooked Milan to Mumbai. The new CAnet 4 linkage gives Canadian researchers direct high-speed contact to all Indian universities and a number of Indian research institutes including the Centre for Advanced Computing, the India Institute of Science, the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics and the Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management.

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