About 13 million tonnes of silt gets drained into Chilka every year, reducing the size of the country's largest brackish water lagoon on Orissa coast at an alarming rate.

The latest survey conducted by the Central Inland Capture Fisheries Research Institute has attributed physiographic changes and human intervention to the lake losing silt at a rate of 1.42 sq km per annum.

The phenomenon has also made a dent into the lagoon's potential as a source of fishery. Regulated inflow of freshwater discharge through rivers and nallahs and reduced ingress of sea-water from the Bay of Bengal have been changing the original character of the lake, according to the survey by the institute, a government agency belonging to the Indian Council of Agricultural Research.

Wipo to protect traditional IPR

Following the historic battle for turmeric patent by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), 170 nations including India have joined hands for thefirst time to form a World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO).

Wipo, which met in June this year, has formed strategic guidelines to protect traditional intellectual property rights of member countries, its Indian representative and director general of CSIR, Dr R A Mashelkar has said.

``The WIPO vision drawn out for the 21st century will help developed and developing countries safeguard their immense traditional knowledge from being pirated to avoid the `turmeric patent' like controversies,'' Mashelkar said.

The two-pronged agenda of WIPO for developing countries like India would be to help them modernise patent offices by providing both technological and financial aid.

``Moreover, WIPO will set up minimum modernisation standards (MMS) for all member countries and help developing nations to rise to these levels again with technical know-how and economic help,'' he said.

Calling it a major boost for India in the changed intellectual property regime, Mashelkar said, it will also be a platformfor the country to show its immense traditional wealth of herbs and medicines.

Under the scheme, WIPO will set up an intellectual property digital library (IPDL) to digitise the gamut of traditional knowledge in the form of user-friendly databases.

Bacteria to treat pharma industry effluent

A new bacterial species that can clean drug industry effluents effectively has been isolated by Hyderabad-based scientists.

The bacterium, isolated from soil, can reduce effluents'chemical oxygen demand (COD), a parameter to measure pollution load, by 75 per cent.

Generated during manufacturing processes, drug industry effluents can either be organic or inorganic in nature. Both forms are toxic.

Though many of the compounds present in the effluent can be treated conventionally, some poorly degradable compounds are also released in the process which needs to be treated to protect the environment.

The bacteria, isolated by scientists at Hyderabad-based Dr Reddy's research foundation can biologicallydegrade difficult-to-treat effluents effectively.A member of the coccobacilli family, the strain, drcc-165, can lower COD by 75 per cent which is not possible using conventional methods, the researchers reported in the latest issue of the Journal of Scientific and Industrial Research.

CIMAP gets accreditation for biological and chemical testing

The National Accreditation Board for testing and calibration laboratories (NABL) India has officially appointed the Central Institute of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants (CIMAP) in the field of chemical and biological testing.

A CIMAP release issued said the accreditation under chemical testing would cover various types of tests for certain drugs and pharmaceuticals, drug intermediates and raw materials, essential oils, nitrogenous, phosphatic and potassic fertilisers, water samples and agricultural products (plant materials).

Under biological testing, the CIMAP has been accredited for biological assays, toxicological testing, sterility tests,bio-efficiency of fungicides, pesticides and identification and quality evaluation of crude drugs included in an Indian pharmacopoca (1966).