A national symposium on 'Biotechnology for a Better Future’ was also held 15th to 17th January 2004 at the Dr Küppers Biotech Unit, Laboratory of Applied Biology, St Aloysius College, Mangalore. Around 160 delegates from 50 institutions all over the country participated in the symposium. During the three days of the symposium, 41 oral papers and 45 poster papers were presented by the delegates. The emphasis of the presentations was on the application of tissue culture, transgenic technology and molecular methods for a better future in the areas of food and agriculture, horticulture and forestry, environment, medicine and health, energy and fuel and biodiversity.

Dr K.V. Peter, Vice Chancellor, Kerala Agricultural University inaugurated the symposium with the keynote address on `Application of biotechnology in Indian agriculture’. The inaugural address was given by Dr Manmohan Attavar in which he said that government support is needed to make the plant biotech products competitive.

Dr S.K.Sen, IIT-BREF Biotech, IIT-Kharagpur delivered the Prof Street memorial lecture on `Generation of transgenic IR64 rice line resistant against yellow stem borer’. Dr N.S.Shekhawat, Biotechnology Unit, Jai Narain Vyas University, Jodhpur, delivered the Prof Gadgil Memorial Lecture on `Regeneration and micropropagation in service of 'forestry as basic and applied sciences’.

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Special lectures on `Reproductive organ development in Arabidopisis and Cycas : Conservation of AGAMOUS gene function during 300 million years of evolution’ by Dr Prakash P.Kumar, National University of Singapore, Singapore; `Pollution-free cooking in rural India’ by Dr A.D.Karve, Appropriate Rural Technology Institute, Pune; `Transgenic approach for the management of insect pests with special reference to Bt-cotton’ by Dr K.S.Mohan, Monsanto Research Center, Bangalore; Application of biotechnology for bioremediation by Dr S F D’Souza, Head * BARC, Mumbai were very informative and were well appreciated by the participants.
A concluding session on Biotechnology for business was held with presentations on ‘Maintaining leadership in the Biotechnology sector and accelerating the pace of development of Biotechnology in Karnataka’ by Dr Divaker Rao, CEO, Karnataka Biotechnology Development Council, Bangalore; `Commercializing plant tissue culture – the Indian failure’ by Dr L.V.Venkataraman, ELVESS Biotech Consultancy Pvt Ltd., Mysore; Entrepreneurship by Dr. Kirti D’Souza *

The symposium was held on the occasion of the 26th annual meeting of the Plant Tissue Culture Association of India. Three new members were elected during the meeting based on their valuable contributions to plant tissue culture and the presentation they had made. It was also decided to rename the association as ‘Plant Tissue Culture and Biotechnology Association of India’.
The hosting Institution, St Aloysius College, is celebrating the 125 year of its foundation. Eminent alumni who have made internationally acknowledged contribution to the field of biotechnology were honored during the symposium.

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