The Union Minister for Agriculture and Farmer’s Welfare, Radha Mohan Singh, inaugurated the Central Genomics and Quality Laboratory facility at the National Rice Research Institute, Cuttack, in presence of Union Minister for Petroleum Dharmendra Pradhan.
The complex will house a number of laboratories within, including an environmental soil science laboratory, a soil quality laboratory, grain quality laboratory, food proximate laboratory, a dedicated molecular biochemistry laboratory among others.
The state-of-the-art facility was developed in a record time of less than three years. This would help the farmers analyse the quality of the soil, water and produce, apart from accelerating research and development into new varieties of rice, Singh said. Furthermore, he praised the institute for toiling in the national interest and ensuring nutritional security of Indians.
NRRI is presently working on developing as well as popularizing super-yielding varieties and agricultural technology that will not only help improve productivity, but also make the crops climate resilient and profitable. Singh also commended the NRRI’s efforts to construct a mobile app, ‘riceXpert’, which has helped facilitate real-time flow of information from scientists to farmers.