Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) roped in Saskatchewan University in Canada for advanced researches in second generation technologies for bio-fuels.

IARI director, SA Patil said, “Agri residues such as bagasse, wheat straw, sorghum and maize starws, leaf litter and various other plant biomass, which have not been adequately utilised for energy production, provide ample opportunities for use as bio-fuels. Conversion of biomass to clean energy such as hydrogen, ethanol and biogas offer promising solutions. We have entered into an agreement with the Saskatchewan University in Canada for four specific projects on bio-fuels.”

One project is for conversion of biomass to ethanol using different technologies like acid hydrolysis and super critical carbon dioxide to produce fermentable sugars, which will be converted to ethanol via fermentation. Another project is production of bio-diesel from Jatropha and other tree bearing oils (TBOs) using ultra sound technology.

Other two projects are for conversion of waste biomass to biogas and biofertilisers and for biomass conversion to hydrogen through super critical water process.

The dean in the college of engineering in the Saskatchewan University, Janusz Nozinski said, ?Saskatchewan province is a leader in production of peas and lentils. We also export to India. Chickpea in India and Canada face among other stresses, the disease of Ascochyta blight. We have signed and agreement for collaborative research on identification and development of molecular markers linked to Ascochyta blight resistance.?

Breeding of chickpeas for resistance with mutually shared breeding populations for multi-region, multi-race based disease screening and phenotyping will be taken up along with identification and charcterisation of races and resistances in the germplasm. The joint collaboration would also aim at researches in plant genomics (SNP markers for diagnostic and molecular breeding), development of transgenic crops resistant to abiotic stresses and QTL identification.