The Biotechnology Centre will house a sophisticated and modern training centre with tissue culture-cum-leaf and soil analysis laboratories.

The objective of setting up such a centre is to bring an awareness of modern day biotechnology within the reach of the common farmer and to reap the benefits of such technologies in the improvement of crops in terms of quality and quantity, sources in the horticulture department told The Financial Express. The state government has decided to invest Rs 2.5 croresfor setting up the centre. However, in the first phase, the leaf analysis and soil testing laboratory, set up at a cost of Rs 1 crore, is all set to go on stream within a fortnight, sources said. The officials of horticulture department have been sent to Indian Institute of Horticulture Research (IIHR) for training. Farmers who wish to avail of the facilities at the left analysis centre will be charged a fee, the officials said without divulging further details.

The state-of-the-art leaf analysis and soil testing laboratory will house modern and sophisticated equipment such as nitrogen auto-analyser, atomic absorption spectrophotometer, UV/vis spectrophotometre, microwave digester, flame photometre and fire resistant fume hood and others. These equipment are operated either by microprocessor or PC Windows based key board easy to operate programs. Explaining the facilities at the laboratory, the horticulture director Sukumar said, the nitrogen auto analyser, for example, is a fully automatic machine and thesample analysis and the nitrogen content in the samples can be had in the form of hard copies within four minutes. The analysis carried out in the laboratory determines the actual levels of various elements in the petioles of different horticulture products.