Plant Biotechnology:

• Conservation strategies for improved, rare, high valued medicinal and aromatic plants through tissue culture.
• Study on control of genetic instability of cultured tissue for maintaining genetic uniformity in long term culture.
• Genetic diversity analysis of promising cultivars of turmeric, ginger and lemongrass using molecular marker (RAPD, Microsattelite, ISSR), cytological marker (chromosome analysis) and biochemical marker (curcumin, oleoresin and essential oil content).
• Molecular characterization in turmeric and ginger for developing molecular marker for high curcumin, high oleoresin and high oil yielding genotypes.
• In vitro mutagenesis for enhancing yield, quality and disease resistance in turmeric.
• Enhancement of size of micro-rhizome in turmeric and ginger for improving rhizome yield of tissue culture derived plants in field.
  Pharmaceutical Biotechnology:
• In vitro toxin tolerance in turmeric and ginger using microbial culture filtrate aiming to increase disease resistance.
• Study of anti-microbial activity of extracts of phytochemical important medicinal plants.
• Evaluation and optimization of bio-sorption potential of microbial biomass of industrial importance.
  Pharmacology
• Phytochemical investigations of medicinally active compound from plant sources.
• Development of “New Drug Molecules” from plant sources for various diseases and metabolic disorders like Diabetes, Epilepsy, Alzheimer's disease, Cancer, Neuroprotection, etc.
  Pharmaceutics
• Formulation development employing Nanotechnology, sustained release and micro-encapsulation technology etc.

Title - ‘Assessment of genetic diversity in the genus Zingiber (Zingiberceae) using different molecular markers and in-vitro conservation of some rare and economically important taxa'
Fund Sanctioned - Rs.25,00,000/ -(Twenty five lakhs rupees only), two junior research fellows (JRF) are working under this project. Very recently this department has also required a project grant from DST, New Delhi with sanctioned amount Rs.17 lakhs.