E-Paper
New virus to keep tobacco plants safe
AN EMINENT scientist and deputy director of the Institute of Genomics and Integrated Biology (IGIB) under the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) Dr RH Das has succeeded in developing a new kind of virus to keep tobacco plants safe against the deadly insects.
AN EMINENT scientist and deputy director of the Institute of Genomics and Integrated Biology (IGIB) under the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) Dr RH Das has succeeded in developing a new kind of virus to keep tobacco plants safe against the deadly insects.
Dr Das, who was here to address a one-day lecture series at the DAV Degree College, told Hindustan Times that it has been a general complaint of the tobacco growers that a deadly caterpillar caused heavy damage to the standing crop every year.
If they used insecticides to kill it, the insecticides not only polluted the environment, but it also deteriorated the quality of the tobacco leafs and debarred them from selling their produce in the home and the global market alike.
The new type of virus known as ‘Spotoptera Litura Nuelco-poly Hebrosis virus (SLNP)’ developed by him has proved to be the most effective means to check the invasion of the deadly caterpillars and other insects over the tobacco plant.
The virus silently kills the caterpillar without effecting the environment and the quality of the tobacco leafs, he said.
Dr Das, who is also the president of the Indian Science Congress Association, while delivering his lecture said that certain genes were identified, which were responsible for causing deadly diseases like AIDS and cancer.
These genes had little utility in human body. In case, the identified genes were ‘silenced’ human lives could be protected against the onslaught of cancer and AIDS virus, he added.
Dr Das has conducted gene-silencing studies on peanut and has claimed to have remarkable results in connection with checking certain diseases in the fruit. He further said that a step of protein synthesis could be stopped by using or by presence of certain enzymes specific to that step of protein synthesis by a particular gene.
While introducing Dr Das to young scientists and students, the principal of the college, Dr Ashok Saxena said that Dr Das was engaged in several important researches on molecular biology and bio-technology for containing the deadly insects through biological systems rather than using chemical based insecticides and pesticides.
