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India Hyderabad based IICT to soon become hub for new-age pesticides
Aug. 20, 2018
The city-based Indian Institute of Chemical Technology (IICT) has identified 15 such essential agrochemicals and pesticides whose patents are set to expire soon and are being presently imported from China. A mission mode project will be launched by IICT in the next few months with a deadline of March 2020, to develop indigenous processes for manufacturing these pesticides, IICT Director Dr S Chandrasekhar told.
As a result, once the patents of these imported pesticides expire, Indian companies can start manufacturing them as per the process developed by IICT so that the pesticides will be available at affordable cost to the farmers. This mission mode project by Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) is a part of Central government’s initiative of doubling the income of farmers by 2022.
IICT will play the role of nodal lab for this project and work along with seven other CSIR laboratories in the country to achieve this target. The Hyderabad-based chemical lab will also be the ‘kilo lab’ for this project, which means that it will be responsible for scaling up of the manufacturing process developed for 15 pesticides and manufacturing them in large amounts, for demonstrating them to the industry.
When contacted, Dr T Shekharam, Senior Principal Scientist, IICT, said, “New-age pesticides play an important role in agriculture and are required for doubling the income of farmers. However, Indian pesticide companies do not have very good research and development facilities, as they usually buy active ingredients and manufacture pesticides. As IICT has been working on synthesis of chemicals since long, we have been given this project.”
He also said that as Central government is also focusing on ‘more crop per drop’ for improving crop productivity with water efficiency in agriculture, an important intervention required for this is improving usage of crop protection chemicals like pesticides, which are used in India in very small quantities compared to the West. Once Indian companies get the ability to manufacture these pesticides, they can be available at cheaper price.
Source: The New Indian Express
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