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JAI VIGYAN PROJECT ON COFFEE MAKES SUBSTANTIAL PROGRESS
New Delhi ~ July 10, 2001
The Jai Vigyan project on "Biotech Approaches for Improvement of Coffee" has made substantial progress as per the envisaged work plan. The salient findings include analysis of species relationships of COFFEA using different markers development of mapping populations with arabica and robusta background for molecular genetic studies establishment of genetic variability in root characteristics using physiological and molecular traits construction of agro-bacterium binary vectors with kanamycin and hygromycin selection markers for coffee transformation identification of bacterial strain capable of degrading caffeine illucidation of the catabolic pathway for caffeine degradation and isolation of bacterial strain with potential anti-fungal activity.
The project jointly sponsored by the Department of Biotechnology and the Coffee Board was launched with the main objective of achieving coffee germplasm characterisation for better exploitation in varietal improvement and crop management. The other aims being developing suitable mapping populations and ideal DNA markers towards generating a molecular linkage map of coffee and genetic transformation of coffee for engineering pest and disease resistance. Inspite of the high economic significance the efforts for exploitation of biotechnological approaches for coffee improvement and crop production technologies are rather minimal not only in India but also elsewhere in the world. Hence the project was entitled "Biotechnological Approaches for Coffee Improvement". Moreover the project is unique in the sense that it is multi-institutional involving the best expertise available in the country in the respective areas of research. Coffee is one of the most important plantation crops in tropics being cultivated over 50 developing countries including India. As an export-oriented commodity coffee is of significant importance in the global trade rated next only to petroleum products. In India it is cultivated in an area of 3.4 lakh hectares mainly in the southern states of Karnataka (56.5%) Kerala (24.7%) and Tamilnadu (9%) the rest coming from non-traditional areas like Andhra Pradesh Orissa and North-eastern States.
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