Port Blair, Sept. 12: ICAR-Central Island Agriculture Research Institute, Port Blair has organized an International Hands-on Training on “Cutting edge Molecular and Bioinformatics tools for conservation and productivity enhancement of indigenous animal genetic resources” from 24th August 2019 to 07th September 2019. This Short Term Training Programme (STTP) was funded by Ministry of External Affairs under the India-Africa Forum Summit III (STTP-IAFSIII) at ICAR-CIARI which was one among the twelve training programme to be organized by the different ICAR institutes this year. Nine delegates from six African countries namely Comoro (1), Eritrea (1), Kenya (3), Malagasy (1), Namibia (1), Nigeria (2) participated in the training programme.
During the valedictory function held on 07th September 2019 Dr. Rafeeque. R. Alyethodi, Scientist, Animal Genetics and Breeding, Animal Science Division the Course-Director informed that a total of 25 lectures were delivered by 17 resource persons (2 external resources person) followed by hands-on sessions on various molecular tools used in genomics, transcriptomics and proteomicsas well as various bioinformatic tools for genome analysis. Study visits to the nearby reputed institutes such as ICMR Regional centre, Zoological Survey of India, National Institute of Ocean Technology beside cultural visits to different Indian heritages such as Cellular Jail, ASI Museum and to Swaraj Dweep were made to enlighten the participants.
The Chief guest Dr. B. Gangaiah, Director CIARI expressed his happiness on the fruitful conduct of international programme for the African researchers. He appreciated the efforts of the Course Director and his team involved in making this programme a great success. He expressed his desire to have more number of international programme in the coming years and also collaborative programme with the African countries. He concluded his remarks by saying that this this training has helped wider scientific discussion, knowledge sharing, and also in formulation of future collaborative programmes between Indian and African researchers.