The National Biodiversity Authority (NBA), under the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC), has reconstituted the Expert Committee on Agrobiodiversity for a tenure of 1 year.
Dr PL Gautam has been appointed as the Chair of the committee, and Dr Trilochan Mohapatra has been appointed as the Co-Chair.
The National Biodiversity Authority (NBA) has designated two more institutions as national repositories under Section 39 of the Biological Diversity Act, 2002 (BD Act). The initiative aims to enhance the conservation and systematic documentation of biological resources.
The new repositories include the Referral Centre Bhavasagara at the Centre for Marine Living Resources and Ecology (CMLRE) in Kochi (Kerala) and the MACS Collection of Microorganisms and National Fungal Culture Collection at the Agharkar Research Institute (ARI) in Pune (Maharashtra). With the additions, the total count of the national network of repositories has increased to 20.