Russia signed biotechnology development programme

On April 24, 2012 Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin signed the "COMPLEX PROGRAMME of BIOTECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT IN RUSSIA TO 2020". Finally, biotechnology, covering wide spectrum of economic areas, becomes real priority for the development of innovative economy of the country.

One of the goals of the programme - Russia to take leading position in biotechnology and to create globally competitive sector of bioeconomy, which, along with nanotechnology and information technology should be the basis for modernizing Russian economy.

The programme shall be implemented in two phases in 2012-2015 and 2016-2020, respectively, and will require total state investment of 1.18 trillion rubles.

The money will be spent on the development of priority fields of biotechnology. Thus bioenergy sector will need 367 billion rubles, industrial biotechnology - 210 billion rubles, agricultural and food biotechnology - 200 billion rubles, biomedicine - 150 billion rubles, biopharmaceuticals - 106 billion rubles, marine biotechnology - 70 million rubles, forest biotechnology - 45 billion rubles, and environmental biotechnology - 30 billion rubles.

According to the programme the federal budget allocated to these fields may be adjusted during the formation and execution of the work.

We hope that the programme will serve as efficient basis for the formation of a new type of economy in Russia - bioeconomy, based on knowledge.

An excerpt from the programme Section “Agricultural Biotechnology”

"Plant varieties developed using the methods of biotechnology"

Currently the Russian Federation almost does not develop plant varieties and hybrids of the next generation, resistant to drought, diseases, herbicides, pests and adverse environmental conditions, using post-genomic technologies (methods of breeding based on the use of molecular markers) and genetic engineering, which are increasingly being used around the world.

Without the use of agricultural biotechnology innovations Russian agricultural production will continue to be cost expensive and not competitive with foreign countries. Such situation will have negative impact on domestic food production sector.

A set of activities will contribute to the development of advanced post-genomic and biotechnological methods in plant breeding and the formation of dynamic markets of transgenic seeds and plants, demanded by farmers.