Union Minister of Science and Technology and Earth Sciences, Dr Harsh Vardhan on Sunday inaugurated the new administrative and research buildings of two national institutes namely National Agri-Food Biotechnology Institute (NABI) and Center of Innovative and Applied Bioprocessing (CIAB) at Mohali.
Speaking on the occasion, the Union Minister expressed his pleasure in dedicating both the institutes to the nation, and emphasised the need for quality research work and output with optimal utilisation of state-of-art equipment and infrastructure that can reach common man in a form that can be easily perceived in proper perspective.
He encouraged scientists and students to exploit the biotechnological tools to address the problems related to quality of food and malnutrition with full enthusiasm and zeal getting inspiration from the legacy and contributions of champions in the field of science and technology.
The Union Minister also urged both the institutes to address the problems of hunger and malnutrition and to bring nutritional revolution in the country through biotechnology research and innovation for Food and nutrition security.
Dr Vardhan also said that young researchers and students should aim big and work hard to achieve their goals with sustained efforts.
Interacting with the faculty, he emphasized the need for doing new innovations that have an immediate societal impact with the common man as the target. He also counseled researchers to shift from routine to out of the box thinking and to dream big to translate their efforts to greater innovations.
NABI is the first agri-food and nutritional based biotechnology institute, which has been set up by the Department 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 unutilized and underutilized biomass.
Both the institutes are a part of agri-food cluster in the Knowledge City, Mohali along with its neighboring 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.
The 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 Rs 43 crore whereas NABI has a total floor space of 3,17,500 square feet built at a cost of Rs 135 crores.
The institutes apart from providing quality research in the field of agricultural biotechnology and bio processing, will also provide innovative technologies in the field of food processing.