6.18 crore rupees sanctioned by DBT for a period of 4 years
The Repository of Tomato Genomics Resources (RTGR) at the University of Hyderabad (UoH) was established in 2010 with funding from the Department of Biotechnology, Govt. of India, to conduct advanced scientific research in the frontier areas of genomics, proteomics, and metabolomics of tomato. Prof. RP Sharma and Dr. Y Sreelakshmi associated with the Department of Plant Sciences in the School of Life Sciences at UoH are instrumental in leading multi-crore research projects funded by DBT to improve the nutrition and shelf-life of tomatoes. Given their scientific contributions, DBT recognized the RTGR as the Center of Excellence for ‘Genome Engineering in Tomato’.
The Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science and Technology, Government of India has now sanctioned an amount of Rs.6.18 crores for a period of four (4) years (2021-25) for the project titled “Research and Service facilities for Plant Metabolomics and Proteomics”, to RTGR at UoH.
The Center has advanced instrumentations for conducting state-of-the-art research in proteomics and metabolomics. It has successfully established methods for high-throughput plant metabolomics and proteomics. The research infrastructure established at the RTGR is now accessible to the universities and research institutes across the country through major funding from the DBT-SAHAJ Infrastructure scheme. This facility will be the first of its kind to provide a dedicated service on plant metabolomics and proteomics in the country.
The ‘Research and Service facilities for Plant Metabolomics and Proteomics’ at RTGR will be providing service to UoH and other academic institutions, industry, seed companies, etc., on a charge basis. RTGR will also train the users to comprehend and execute metabolomic and proteomic data analysis by conducting annual hands-on training workshops. Dr. Y. Sreelakshmi, Associate Professor at RTGR, will be coordinating the project to provide high-throughput plant metabolome and proteome analyses to the users. The DBT-SAHAJ service facility will further research at the national level on regulation of metabolic pathways and proteins underlying complex traits such as disease resistance and nutrition in crop plants.