Symposium on 'Recent Advances in Biotechnology for Food and Fuel'

In an effort to deliberate on the recent trends in biotechnology for food and fuel, TERI organized a two-day National Symposium on November 19-20, 2014, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi. The efforts that biotechnologists are making in order to provide food and health security to the ever increasing population along with meeting the energy requirements of the world are well known and this symposium was organized to discuss the current status and future role of biotechnology in these two major research areas. Dr Banwari Lal, Director, Environmental & Industrial Biotechnology Division, TERI opened the symposium with a welcome address. The keynote address was delivered by Dr Swapan Datta, Deputy Director General, Indian Council of Agricultural Research, which was followed by a vote of thanks by Dr Nutan Kaushik, Senior Fellow, TERI.

The first day of the symposium saw discussions on food-related issues, such as, food security, sustainability and climate change, value addition of food and nutraceuticals, biotechnology and IPM, food safety issues, etc. Experts from various government institutes like DST, DBT, IARI, EICI, FSSAI, and from industries expressed their views on these issues followed by a Q&A session.

On the second day, issues related to biofuels were discussed under various sessions related to biomass feedstocks, conversion and processing methods, sustainability, environmental impact, and economy of biofuels. This was followed by a poster session where participants exhibited and presented their research work in the poster form. In the concluding session, the Chairpersons from each technical session put forward their recommendations and key points.