bioAgriculture

The Agri. Biotech: bioAgriculture business line aims to improve productivity in Agriculture through a combination of:

• Plant genetics & breeding using Molecular Techniques

• Selection of natural and artificial variation and

• Plant Transformation.

Some of the major products in the pipeline are:

• Male Sterile Lines in Rice (FTO - worldwide patent)

• Male Sterile Lines in Tomato.

• Engineering plants for Salt stress by over-expressing a putative protease inhibitor -AGTSal11 in Rice

• Transformed lines in Pearl Millet

• Isolation of DREB genes in rice and engineering for drought and high salt stress tolerance in rice. Engineering Pearl millet for Disease Resistance

• Engineering Indica Rice lines for Oxidative Stress Tolerance.

• Production of DHA and ALA in yeast and sunflower

• Enhancement of Quality traits (Aroma) in Rice

• Cloning and transformation of cDRSS (cDNA Rasi Salt Stress) genes for salt tolerance

In addition to carrying on its in-house research, Avesthagen uses its infrastructure and capabilities to provide a range of services to the international seed industry, both in "fee for service" and in "co-development" mode:

• Gene Discovery: Identifying gene of Interest, Cloning, Sequencing and Vector Construction

• Plant Transformation: Plant Tissue/ Callus culture, Agro bacterium / Biolistic Gun Plantlet Regeneration and Hardening

• Transgene Analysis: Integration - PCR & Southern Analysis, Product - Protein Analysis

• Transgene Stabilization: Maintenance of Transgenics in containment (Greenhouse), Toxicity & Allergen Testing

• Field Trials

• Marker Assisted Breeding ("MAB"): both development of DNA markers as well as germplasm screening programs using existing markers

• Varietal Identification & DNA fingerprinting

Avesthagen currently has over 83 patent applications, of which 37 are resulting from the Seed for Food program. Out of the 37, 12 are international patents, which include the patents for the DHA/ALA as well as the CMS technology. In addition, Avesthagen has licensed several technologies / genes for further R&D, from other parties. As a result, Avesthagen Seed for Food has substantial freedom to operate in the agri-biotech domain. 

Core Competency 

A complete 'gene to field' set-up places us in a unique position for being a part of the gene discovery, its subsequent cloning, analysis and transformation into plants, and also raising the transgenic plants in containment, up to the production of hybrid seeds. Avesthagen is being tied-up with ICRISAT for field trials. The facility includes an advanced molecular laboratory equipped for gene discovery, cloning, sequencing, molecular analysis and transformation and supported by Bioinformatics and Proteomics teams.

Avesthagen Hybrid-FIT^TM

A dedicated team effort by the "Seed for Food" group at Avesthagen utilizing the state-of-art technology for the improvement and increase in the agricultural produce. Developing novel plant varieties that are not only tolerant to environmental and biotic stress, but also plant products with improved taste, nutrition and longer shelf life

RNA editing - a tool to generate male sterile lines in agronomically important crops

• Generating male sterile lines by inducing mitochondrial dysfunction using a novel gene product by plant transformation

• Powerful tool enabling the breeders to shorten the laborious emasculation and selection procedure

• A species/variety independent protocol that can be extended to a number of important crop varieties for F 1 hybrid seed production

The AGTSal 11 - Silver Rice^TM (IR64)

The AGTSal 11 - Silver Rice^TM salt tolerant variety of Indica rice State-of-art Avesthagen Plant Transformation Facility (AaPTF) has successfully developed and established workable protocols for producing a number of transgenic crops that include cereals, vegetable crops, oilseeds and cotton, using Biolistic gun and Agrobacterium-mediated

Avesthagen Rice-BCP^TM

Relates to the isolation of a Blue Copper Protein from the RASI variety of rice seedlings under salinity stress conditions. The protein was found to be up-regulated two to three fold under salt stressed conditions. Differential expression was observed between the RASI control and salt stressed sample and that there was increased induction of the mRNA in the salt stressed RASI

The APTF-Pearl Millet Transformation System^TM (IR64)

Avesthagen Plant Transformation Facility (APTF) has been instrumental in successfully establishing workable transformation protocols for producing a number of agronomically important crops that include cereals, vegetable crops, oilseeds and cotton, using Biolistic gun-/Agrobacterium-mediated transformation systems.

The APTF-Pearl Millet Transformation System^TM is a very well established protocol that has been utilized in developing Environmental Stress Tolerant (Avesthagen EnSTol^TM) and Fungal resistant (Avesthagen Myco-FIT^TM) varieties of Pearl Millet.

Indica Rice BAC Libraries^TM

Rice is a leading grain crop and the staple food for over half the world population. Rice is also an ideal species for genetic and biological studies for cereal crops and other monocotyledonous plants because of its small genome and well-developed genetic system. To facilitate rice genome analysis leading to physical mapping, the identification of molecular markers closely linked to economic traits, and map-based cloning, we have constructed bacterial artificial chromosome library (Indica Rice BAC LibrariesTM) in collaboration with Dr. Rod A. Wing, CUGI, Clemson University, of two superior Indica varieties of rice 'SWARNA' and 'BASMATI' which represent the two major genomes of cultivated rice, both are leading commercial varieties and widely used germplasm in rice breeding programs. An entire representative and genetically stable BAC library of rice genome from Swarna and Basmati has been constructed by the Seed for Food Group at Avesthagen This has been systematically analysed by restriction enzyme fragmentation and polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis. The BAC recombinant transformants were picked at random and analyzed for the size of inserts, which was observed to be of 120 kb in length on average.

Avesthagen has a library of > 50,000 such BAC clones. Large scale DNA sequencing of individual chromosomes could now be initiated simply by selecting and sequencing the minimally overlapped BAC clones of the contigs. We are now in the process of mapping the contigs to chromosomes.

Biochemical engineering of natural product biosynthesis pathways^TM

Metabolic engineering of natural products is a science that been built on the goals of traditional strain improvement with the availability of modern molecular biological technologies. During the past decade, the state of the art in metabolic engineering of natural products research has been advanced from the first proof-of-principle experiment based on minimal known genetics to a fairly commonplace event using highly specific and sophisticated gene manipulation methods. With the availability of specific genes, host organisms, vector systems, and advanced molecular biological tools, Avesthagen is aimed at translating metabolic engineering into an industrial reality.

Avesthagen has been focused on the enhanced synthesis of therapeutically relevant secondary metabolites such as colchicine and forskolin in cell-culture systems of G.superba and C.forskohlii respectively. Callus cultures of G.superba were biolistically transformed with a homologue of the recently characterized ORCA family of transcription factors that have been shown to be involved with the regulation of both primary and secondary metabolic flux in higher plant systems, so as to facilitate an enhanced, controlled production of colchicine. In similar lines, a homologue of the R2/R3-myb family of transcription factors has been over-expressed in C. forskohlii cultures to result in an increased accumulation of forskolin.

Avesthagen-MetaGrid^TM

The plethora of plants selected for the isolation of therapeutically relevant molecules to be used in the treatment of diabetes, is being subjected to both targeted and non-targeted screening procedures. The ongoing-targeted screening procedures, which feature a comprehensive metabolite profiling of multitudes of phyto-extracts, were envisaged to facilitate the creation of a metabolite grid. Extensive comparative analyses of the individual plant species with the existing drug and/or phytoextract formulations in the market has revealed the presence of both unique and common molecular constituents that will be used individually and/or in combination to accelerate the process of discovery of novel therapeutic formulations.

Avesthagen-ProFuse^TM

A concerted team effort by the Food for Medicine group at Avesthagen making use of the state of art technology to produce a library of novel compounds by the fusion of protoplasts from two different cell lines of Taxus species, thereby engineering living cells to a state of desired metabolite concentrations and fluxes. The resulting product will possess distinctive compounds of therapeutic value coupled with a fast growing nature.

Avesthagen - Elixir^TM

Avestha-Elixir^TM has been envisaged as a unique formulation aimed at combating ageing, fatigue, inertia and stress, thus promoting youthfulness and vigour. This formulation will serve as a panacea for health, free of chemical pesticides, antibiotics, hormones, herbicides and chemical solvents. Avestha-ElixirTM can be consumed as such or can be incorporated into other food products, especially confectionary items and beverages.

Over Expression of Mitochondrial Manganese Superoxide (MnSOD)

MnSOD is a nuclear-encoded protein that scavenges superoxide radicals in the mitochondrial matrix. The chloroplast is one of the primary sites of high AOS production during stress conditions. By targeting MnSOD enzyme to the chloroplast, the capacity to scavenge any radical that may be produced can be increased.