State of the art laboratories
The DBT-NECAB is equipped with state-of-the-art laboratories to cater to cutting edge scientific research both within and outside the NE region.
The Plant Gene Technology Laboratory:
Tissue culture and transformation experiments are conducted for the generation of insect resistant legumes etc. The lab comprises a molecular biology laboratory, a genetic transformation facility and fully controlled tissue culture room and three greenhouses to grow the transformed/transgenic plants.
Molecular Biology Laboratory
Genetic Transformation Facility
Fully controlled culture room
Greenhouse
The Molecular Breeding and Bioinformatics Facility:
The facility caters to drought related studies by controlling the input of water. The goal is to identify stress tolerant QTL/genes from local rice accessions. The molecular breeding facility also has two automated rainout shelters of 200m2 planting area established at RARS, Titabar and AAU Jorhat campus for drought-resistant segregants of rice. Rainout shelters are designed to prevent the experimental plots from rains and high speed wind.
Rain-out Shelter, DBT-NECAB, AAU(1)
Rain-out Shelter, DBT-NECAB, AAU(2)
Rain-out shelter, RARS, Titabar
The Microbial Bioprospecting Laboratory:
The laboratory specializes in identifying genes from soil microbes of NE India for acid tolerance. The activities routinely conducted in the lab include rice-wine production and technology transfer, maintenance of routine and agriculturally important microbial culture collection, Atomic Absorption Spectrophotometry and pot-culture evaluation of plant-growth-promoting microbes.
Field trial on Brinjal
Field trial on lentil
Field trial on direct seeded rice
Field trial on rice
“XAAJ” rice-based alcoholic beverage
Commercial rice-wine production technology and training facilities.
The Xaj-brewing technology developed by the Laboratory of Microbiology,
Assam Agricultural University, Jorhat involves the production of a defined starter
culture with compatible fungi, yeast isolates and plant parts towards standard brewing of
rice based alcoholic beverages. The Laboratory developed a defined starter culture using
compatible and well-characterized microbial consortium of fungal and yeast isolates.
In-house proximate analysis as well as a report from FSSAI accredited laboratory has revealed
the beverage to be rich in micro- and macronutrients, vitamins, antioxidants, and to be safe
for human consumption. Assam Agricultural University has signed MoUs with (i) North East Agro
Products and Services, Jorhat and (ii) Mr. Deepjyoti Dowari, Demow for commercialization of Xaj.
The industrial partners are expected to start its production by the first quarter of 2022.
Maintenance of agriculturally important microbial culture collection The Laboratory of Microbiology has developed a collection of different plant growth promoting rhizobacteria isolated from agro-ecosystems of North-East India. Keeping a view on soil acidity as the major constraint of agricultural productivity in NE India, functionally characterized plant-growth-promoting and acid-tolerant rhizobacterial strains such as Bacillus megaterium, Bacillus subtilis, Microbacterium testaceum, Bacillus amyloliquefaciens etc. isolated from various environmental matrices (e.g. rhizosphere and endosphere of tea, rice plants etc.) have been maintained in this facility.
