With this, the government had already cleared foreign direct investments (FDI) worth Rs 8,800 crore in the agro-based industries since the opening up of the Indian economy.

Stating this on Wednesday, minister of state for SSIs and agro and rural industries Vasundhara Raje said on Wednesday that the government would soon take steps to popularise the use of bio-technology in the fields of agriculture and food processing as well as integrating it with various industrial applications.

The government will soon formulate an action plan to popularise bio-technology. It also plans to strengthen the existing research and development in the field of bio-technology in order to help the SSIs and agro-rural industries to make full use of bio-technology, according to the minister.