MINSK, 24 August (BelTA) – The funding of the EurAsEC interstate targeted program “Innovative Biotechnology” for 2011-2015 will make up RUB926.6 million, Director of the NASB Institute of Microbiology Emiliya Kolomiets said in a session with the Russian mass media in Minsk on 24 August. The EurAsEC member-states will put RUB772.17 million into the program. The rest, RUB154.43 million, will be allocated by the companies of the countries that are taking part in the program. Belarus, Russia and Kazakhstan will account for 30% of the total funding, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan – 5% each. The program envisages development and implementation of new biotechnologies, biopreparations and diagnostic tests for agriculture, manufacturing industry, medicine and environmental protection. The National Academy of Sciences of Belarus is the customer of the program as Belarus has initiated the effort, according to Emiliya Kolomiyets. The EurAsEC countries have been working hard to fill in the gap in their field of biotechnologies that negatively effects the development of the economic and social programs of its member-states. Today the global bioindustrial output amounts to $400 billion a year. “The EurAsEC is lagging behind in the area,” Emiliya Kolomiets said. Belarus, as well as other CIS countries, has a rich experience, well-developed manufacturing base, highly-qualified personnel who are able to produce various types of national biotechnological produce. No one, however, will be able to organize this work properly alone. Therefore, biologists, especially those from Belarus and Russia, have joined in this effort and work on the program. The scale, complexity and high national significance of the problem requires the efforts of several countries to solve it. Therefore, the EurAsEC is developing the targeted program “Innovative Biotechnology", said Emiliya Kolomiyets. This will allow each state-party of the community to use the experience and resources of the partners and implement breakthrough projects in biotechnology with minimal costs. It will also help expand sales markets for new kinds of biotechnology products. By joint efforts the scientists plan to develop and deploy technologies for new highly effective preparations. This is a biological means of protecting plants and animals from diseases and pests, growth regulators, feed additives, probiotics, vaccines, yeast, enzymes. Their competitiveness will be enhanced through the use of new genetically- engineered high-producer strains. The program also seeks to generate a new level of plant breeding in order to reduce the time, by two to three years, necessary to develop the varieties with economically valuable properties as well as the costs (by 15-20%). The scientists will be also working on the DNA technology for production of transgenic plants resistant to diseases, pests and man-made stresses. The program was approved in May 2010 at a session of the EurAsEC Interstate Council in St. Petersburg. It took a year and a half for the scientists to develop this program. The approval procedures were as time consuming. Belarusian scientists deploy biotechnologies in production quite fast, Emiliya Kolomiyets said. Twenty-seven preparations have already been designed, registered and applied. “We did not have it a decade ago,” she added. БЕЛТА
Written by belta.by
