Areas of Interest:
Bejo Sheetal Biotech Research Centre at Jalna in India is focused for vegetable crop development as one of the mandate and involved in field crop research for its subsidiary companies.
Facilitate the global standard research by working hand in hand with International and National Universities and Institutes for developing innovative technologies for farmers of India and SAARC countries. Modern Biotech research facilities established with sophisticated instruments leaded by highly qualified scientist trained at National and International Institutes. About 40 qualified staff dedicated in various biotech programs for developing biotech based products.
Research and research facilities are recognized by DSIR (Department of Science & Industrial Research) since 1997. Department of Biotechnology support projects are implemented in collaboration with University and Institutes. Scientists work closely with collaborative scientist for exchange of novel ideas. Our major activities are using biotech tools like:
Market Technology:
Molecular markers identification, validation and its use for various trait transfers to assist breeding is one of the major activities. Molecular markers like, RFLP, ISSR, SSR, SNP?s are being used for following the traits in plant breeding. Major traits of interest in vegetable improvement are virus tolerance, disease resistance, nematode resistance, fertility restorer, etc. DNA Molecular markers also being used for quality assurance for genetic purity in parental lines as well as hybrid seed lots.
Genetic Engineering:
Transgenic crop development by genetic modification in vegetable crops is one of the major biotech programs at Bejo Sheetal biotech laboratory. We are dedicatedly working for identifying novel genes from various sources and using selected and validated genes crop transformation. The traits of our interest are like insect, virus, disease resistance and draught, heat, cold, salt & herbicide tolerance. We are also working on crop improvement for value added nutritionally rich varieties in vegetables.
Plant Tissue Culture:
Maintenance of virus /disease free potato parental line is one of the major programs using plant tissue culture application. Several other techniques also being used for developing pure lines in various crops, embryo rescue, micro propagation etc. techniques are also being applied for improvement of vegetable varieties.
Entomology & Biosafety Laboratory:
Artificial raring of the crop insects, maintenance of insects round the year is one the activity of entomology laboratory. Various lepidopteron, spodoptera insects being collected from non transgenic field from different region of India and maintained on either natural or artificial diet for developing fresh first instars' insects to test laboratory developed Bt. plants for its resistance. Bt. protein detection and quantitative analysis is part of biosafety laboratory.