Adopting advanced and improved technologies significantly contribute to increasing productivity and agricultural growth and it will help farmers enhance their income.
CSIR-NCL is developing critical NMR-based profiling methodologies and data analytics for a variety of unifloral and multifloral Indian honey. These techniques not only allow for identification of premium quality honey that is suitable for exports but also enables quantification of adulteration in commercial honey. The impact of this study is expected to be in many dimensions from increasing exports and raising farmer incomes to improving quality of honey in domestic markets, etc. CSIR-NCL has developed several hybrid varieties of safflower whose seeds contain about 350% more quantity of the healthier omega-9 fatty acid (oleic acid). Current work in progress is for registration of these varieties and pilot scale cultivation trials. Besides edible oil usage, the oleic acid containing oil is also useful for producing high value chemicals through the continuous flow synthesis processes developed at NCL.
It also focuses on understanding the process of morphogenesis and transformation of crop plants, horticultural plants and forestry plants, biochemical and molecular processes in primary and secondary metabolites production in plants, and development of genetic tools using omics approaches for applications in agriculture and allied fields.
Projects
- Honey profiling using sophisticated analytical techniques
- Altering fatty acid composition to improve edible oil quality
- New crop protection tools for biotic & abiotic stress tolerance