Biotechnology Policy – West Bengal

1. INTRODUCTION

                        Biotechnology has been described as the last great technical innovation of mankind in the century we have just left behind.  It covers a wide range of scientific and technological activities that include the isolation and purification of any targeted DNA, RNA, proteins, enzymes etc.; cloning and amplification of genes; construction of stream processing methods; production of genetically modified organisms etc. Human intervention in gene technology has enabled the production of organisms which are either self-replicating or can replicate via host organism. The contribution of Biotechnology to the world economics appears to be quite significant as it has already found vast applications in diverse areas like healthcare, agriculture, industrial product development and environmental management. There are several examples of the use of the recombinant products in health care management. Introduction of transgenic plants and crops in commercial agriculture is being considered with great emphasis in many parts of the world. Application of Biotechnology for the production of transgenic plants is primarily meant for higher yield potentials, increased resistance to stress and better crops.  Plant tissue culture is now capable of producing a large number of clones with specific traits and the technique when applied in conjunction with transgenic plant development by gene technology, will be able to produce better crop varieties in the shortest possible time.

 Looking at the world scenario, it is observed that since the first introduction of viral resistant tobacco by China in 1990, a good number of transgenic crops are so far approved by the countries around the world. Globally, more than 60 commercially important plants including maize, cotton, tomato, potato, rice, wheat, papya etc. have been utilised for incorporating transgenic traits. New varieties of rice having 50% excess yield is already incorporated with Afro-Asian strains and are rich in protein. They are more tolerant to disease, drought and acidic soil. The pro-vitamin A enriched Indian rice varieties is expected to go a long way to help the poor farmers. In fact the pro-vitamin A enriched golden rice is now commonly found in several Asian countries. A number of enzyme based textile products have already become the claimants of being processed in an eco-friendly manner without using any hazardous chemical. The chemical like jasmonic acid to trigger the self-defence system in  plants against pests and environmental stresses is now well known. Production of transgenic plants with the ability of overproducing these chemicals is under way. There has been a notable trend in DNA finger printing to detect spurious seeds. Different strains of marine algae are already cultured, extracted and encapsulated for being used as natural sources of vitamins. It has now become very important to know the protein-protein  interaction for understanding the specific disease pathway and therefore, technology development to the extent of combining genomics with proteomics in a single step is in the offing. Allosteric ribozyme technology is already developed for making protein in connection with drug development. Many health care food products with fungi as the main ingredient are already developed in China, the world's largest fungi producing country. The advent of molecular diagnostics has made it possible to detect microbial contamination too.

Though the research and development work in the field of Biotechnology has been quite remarkable, the concomitant growth of biotechnology industries   has remained far from being satisfactory. This has resulted in an under-utilisation of knowledge and manpower already created in this area. Considering the high return on investment, it is the high time to take up a suitable strategy for furthering Biotech activities in the field of health care, agriculture, medical appliances, diagnostics and environment protection.