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Welcome to National Bureau of Agriculturally Important Microorganisms -

Significant achievements of the last 5 years:

  • ICAR-NBAIM has established and strengthened National Agriculturally Important Microbial Culture Collection (NAIMCC) which is an affiliated member of World Federation of Culture Collection (WFCC). NAIMCC has state-of-the-art facilities for short term and long term conservation of microorganisms with more than 8500 preserved accessions of fungi, bacteria, actinmoycters, cyanobacteria and archaea.
  • Under its flagship project ‘Indian soil Microbiome: wealth for national prosperity and posterity’ which is to catalogue and conserve the microbial diversity existing in different agroecological regions of the country, NBAIM has collected soil samples from Meghalaya, Sikkim, Mizoram, parts of Chhattisgarh, Tripura, coastal regions of Kerala, Goa, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, parts of Odisha, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Chhattisgarh, and identified its microbial diversity using cultivable and metagenomic approaches.
  • The Bureau is conserving the genomic resources of microorganisms and established the Microbial Genomic Resource Repository (MGRR). Over 10000 accessions of genomic DNA, clones and gene constructs from various sources are being maintained under MGRR.
  • The Bureau has developed a number of molecular diagnostic assays for early and specific detection of Macrophomina phaseolina, Rhizoctonia solani, Sarocladium oryzae, Fusarium oxysporum f.sp. ciceri, Alternaria spp.<
  • Bureau has completed whole genome sequencing of more than 50 agriculturally beneficial microbes and pathogens which have provided an insight into the biochemistry and physiology of the organisms. This has paved the way for further exploration of their genetic potential in biocontrol, nutrient cycling, and stress tolerance.
  • Bureau has developed a number of microbial bioformulations like BioNPK, BioGrow, BioPhos, RhizoNBAIM, Biobacter which are routinely supplied to farmers, universities, KVKs and ICAR institutes.
  • Bureau under its HRD programe has conducted more than 20 trainings in the past 5 years and trained more than 500 researchers, students and industry partners.

Major outcomes:

  • NAIMCC has a collection of cultures from different ecological niches ranging from extreme environments to agricultural soils all over the country. In 2020, NIAMCC was recognized as an international Depository Authority (IDA) under the Budapest Treaty by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) which has strengthened its role as a premier repository for agriculturally important microorganisms in India and globally. The NAIMCC is the only microbial repository of the country and second in the Asia specifically focusing on agriculturally important microorganisms.
  • The Bureau has significantly contributed to the conservation, sustainable use, and commercialization of microbial resources, aligning with the goals of intellectual property protection and sustainable agriculture. Bureau has supplied around 200 cultures to various industrial stakeholders like IPL biologicals, Insecticides India Ltd., Coromandel Fertilizers for research and validation purposes to produce quality inoculants. It has also assisted research by providing more than 1000 pure cultures to various academic institutes like IARI, New Delhi, IIT-Delhi, Aligarh Muslim University Aligarh, The Energy Research Institute, New Delhi which have translated to a number of high impact publications .
  • The DNA fingerprinting service for biopesticides, provided by the Bureau as the nodal agency for the Central Insecticide Board and Registration Committee (CIB&RC), has significantly streamlined the registration process for microbial strains as biopesticides. By offering molecular identification services, the Bureau has contributed to quicker product authentication for farmers and expedited the registration process. This service has enhanced the efficiency and credibility of biopesticide registration in India. More than 1200 microbial products have been fingerprinted and authenticated till date by the Bureau.
  • The microbe based bioinoculant and composting technologies developed by the Bureau have reached a large number of the farming population of the country and more than 50000 farmers have been sensitized for such ecofriendly technologies.