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India-US agreed on agricultural collaborative research projects

New Delhi, November 18, 2006

The fourth board meeting of India-US Agricultural Knowledge Initiative (AKI) held in Delhi recently agreed on a number of deliverables including collaborative research projects in the area of capacity building, curriculum development, water management and biotechnology which would be taken up during 2007. Under human resources and institutional building, the Borlaug Fellowship programme will continue and the Fellowship will be named Indo-US Borlaug Fellowships. About 12 Borlaug Fellows will be identified by June 2007 for training in the US in the year 2007-08.

Under Food Processing and Marketing, the proposals will be developed for Cold Chain for food and vegetables by involving CIPHET, (ICAR) Ludhiana and development of Cold Chain for fish and marine produce by involving CIFT (ICAR), Kochi during 2007. Also, joint food processing research in identified areas will be initiated in 2007.

Under the "Pigeon pea Genomics Initiative", the activities in regard to genomics using ESTs, SNPs, QTLs, SSRs, BAC library etc. will be carried out in active collaboration of Indian Partners with the UC Davis, California in 2007. Development of collaborative research projects on drought/salinity tolerance in crops will be undertaken next year.

Collaborative research project in Water Management would be put in place as concurrent activities matching the four NASULGC–mediated projects in specified areas with specified job to be performed on a time scale.

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