Date:13/09/2007 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2007/09/13/stories/2007091359772100.htm

Business

Avesthagen gets Australian patent

Special Correspondent

Technology opens up more crops for hybrid seed production

BANGALORE: Avestha Gengraine Technologies Pvt. Ltd. (Avesthagen), the Bangalore-based biotechnology company, has received a patent from the Australian Patent Office for ‘a process for generating cytoplasmic male sterile line in rice and other crops by RNA (cybonucleic acid) editing’.

This promises opportunities to develop hybrids in crops where conventional male sterility is not available or feasible, a release from the company says.

This technology will allow hybrid seed programmes to be developed without narrowing the diversity of germplasm. It opens up more crops for hybrid seed production and it can be transferred to any other crop, within a short time span, as the technology is not crop specific.

This patent closely follows the previous patent approval received by Avesthagen in South Africa and Australia for genetically modified millets, according to Vice-Chairman and Managing Director Vinoo Morawala Patel. Over the years, Avesthagen has built a portfolio of 137 patent applications, 61 of them related to the agri-biotech domain, she added.