Monday, November 28 2005 20:24 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: President A P J Abdul Kalam today (Nov 28,2005) asked plant scientists to evolve new genetically modified varieties of wheat, rice and pulses to meet the challenge arising from the projection that country's food requirement will double by 2020 and water, land and human resources will diminish.

"In India, we are now producing 200 million tonnes of food grains, by 2020 we would be needing around 400 million tonnes of food," Kalam said here while dedicating the National Centre for Plant Genome Research to the nation.

Besides, this would have to be accomplished with the reduced land, water and agriculture work force, he said adding, "Plant genome scientists have an important role to play in finding innovating solutions to this problem by evolving new genetically modified varieties of seeds of rice, wheat and pulses."

"Also they have to evolve certain special varieties which will enable retention of the nutritional properties during the processing of the grains into food products," he said.

The President said the area of 'plant genomics' had opened up new avenues to modulate the gene expression in such a way that plants can be converted into proficient genotypes or varieties to be used as the biofactories producing proteins, therapeutic molecules and nutritional compositions.

In this connection, scientists in India should take up the work on production of anti-cancer substances from a plant called peri-winkle (Catharanthus roseus), he said.

Some progress has been made in isolating genes related toproduction of these molecules, he said adding, "This should be taken up in mission mode since many groups are working in this area worldwide."