Climate Resilient Agriculture has been identified as one of the thematic sectors under the BioE3 Policy for ​‘fostering high-performance biomanufacturing’. India’s agriculture sector is pivotal in ensuring the nation’s food security and economic growth. However, environmental perturbations are altering optimal crop-growing regions, creating uncertainty in agricultural outcomes. As global population growth increases demand for food, feed, fiber, and feedstock under challenging climate conditions, agriculture exerts an outsized impact on land-use change, biodiversity loss, agrochemical overuse, water depletion, and greenhouse gas emissions. Addressing these challenges requires advanced biotechnology and concerted action in minimizing environmental footprint of Agriculture, developing bio-based alternatives to chemical agri-inputs, securing high yield with minimal inputs & transforming agricultural fields into carbon sinks.

Hence, DBT and BIRAC, intend to foster an innovative ecosystem for enabling development and deployment of sustainable & scalable, industry ready technologies to revamp the agricultural value chain from farm to fork to landfill by prioritizing climate resilient strategies leveraging technological innovations including precision genomics/​genome editing, synthetic biology, advanced engineering of free
living/​symbiotic microbiota, in field imaging, artificial intelligence and bio-based agrisolutions. 

In view of this, DBT and BIRAC invite proposals on ​‘High Performance Biomanufacturing for Climate Resilient Agriculture’ to develop technologies and biobased solutions for climate resilient circular Agri-economy. The proposals will be invited under the two categories:
(i) Discovery & Application-oriented Integrated Network Research
(ii) Bridging the Gaps for Industrial scale up

Proposals maybe submitted by both Academia and Industry applicants, either independently or as a collaborative project.

• For proposals from Academia/​Research Institutions: Interested applicants should submit the proposals in the prescribed format duly forwarded by the executive head of the institution through the Department’s e‑ProMIS portal (www​.dbtepromis​.nic​.in).
• For proposals from Industry and Industry-Academia collaboration: Interested applicants should submit the proposals in the requisite format duly forwarded by the executive head of the Company/​LLP/​Institution by logging to the BIRAC website (www​.birac​.nic​.in).

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