Dr. Harsh Vardhan, Union Minister for Science & Technology & Earth Sciences, Environment, Forest & Climate Change inaugurated the new Administrative and Research Buildings of two national institutes under the administrative control of Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science and Technology.
Government of India set up two institutes namely National Agri-Food Biotechnology Institute (NABI) and Centre of Innovative and Applied Bioprocessing (CIAB) in Mohali, Punjab.
These institutes with state of the art equipment will enables scientists/students to exploit the biotechnological tools to address the problems related to quality of food and malnutrition with full enthusiasm and zeal.
It will aim towards getting inspiration from the legacy and contributions of champions in the field of science and technology.
Both the institutes are to address the problems of hunger & malnutrition and to bring nutritional revolution in the country through biotechnology research and innovation for Food and Nutrition Security.
NABI is the first Agri-Food and Nutritional based Biotechnology Institute, which has been set up by the Dept. of Biotechnology in the Knowledge City, Sector 81, Mohali.
CIAB has been set up adjacent to NABI and is the first institute dedicated to generation of secondary agriculture bioproducts through value addition to unutilised and underutilised biomass.
Both the institutes area part of agri-food cluster in the Knowledge City, Mohali along with its neighbouring institutes, like; IISER, ISB, INST and Biotech Park.
The campus comprises of laboratory buildings, 15 acres of land for field experiments, a large glass house, transgenic net houses, office area, housing, guest house, research scholar hostel, utilities and other requisite services.
Total entire area of the campus is 50 acres.
The building complex of CIAB has a total floor space of 77000 square feet built at a cost of INR Forty three crores whereas NABI has a total floor space of 3,17,500 square feet built at a cost of INR one hundred and thirty five crores.
The institutes apart from providing quality research in the field of agricultural biotechnology and bio processing also provide innovative technologies in the field of food processing.
NABI is playing an important role in conducting motivational course to the students of local schools to increase their awareness in life sciences.
Their products of nutritionally rich crops and processing of crop residues in useful products will be provided to the local farming communities to increase their income.
The industry ready specialized products like high anthocyanin have already been taken by local industries under specific MOU.
They are acting as nodal agencies for local organization in the areas Agri food and nutritional biotechnology.
