Dr. Jitendra Singh, Union Minister of State for Science & Technology and Earth Sciences, inaugurated the SPROUT facility at BRIC-NIPGR, New Delhi. The facility aims to develop climate-resilient crops for India's diverse agricultural conditions.
On September 15, 2026, Dr. Jitendra Singh, Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Science & Technology and Earth Sciences and MoS PMO, inaugurated the 'SpeedSeed Phenotyping and Resource Optimization for Unified Trait Analysis' (SPROUT) facility at BRIC-National Institute of Plant Genome Research (BRIC-NIPGR), New Delhi. The Minister described this initiative as a crucial step towards developing climate-resilient crops tailored to different weather conditions in India, given its geographical and agro-climatic diversity.
The SPROUT facility is designed for high-throughput phenotyping, precision stress screening, and evaluation of germplasm, breeding populations, mutants, transgenic, and genome-edited lines. It focuses primarily on chickpea, aiming to connect advances in genomics and genome editing with precise trait evaluation and breeding.
The Minister's visit was attended by Prof. Manoj Prasad, Director, BRIC-NIPGR; Dr. Senthil K. Muthappa, BRIC-NIPGR; and Dr. Nitin Jain, Scientist-H, Department of Biotechnology (DBT). During the event, Dr. Jitendra Singh inaugurated the SPROUT facility, planted a sapling under the ‘Ek Ped Maa Ke Naam’ campaign, and interacted with scientists and officials of BRIC-NIPGR.
The Minister emphasized that modern biotechnology should provide tangible benefits to farmers and respond to real agricultural challenges. He highlighted the potential of genomics, gene technologies, precision phenotyping, and accelerated breeding in addressing future needs.
Source:
Press Information Bureau
