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Biotechnology Research Institute, AARI, Faisalabad
Biotechnology- a cutting edge technology- has numerous applications in almost all the areas of life. It is a set of techniques which involves the application of biological organisms and their components to make or modify a product to improve plants or animals for special uses. Biotechnology has the potential to play a significant role in increasing the agricultural productivity. Biotechnology includes technologies such as gene transformation (modification and transfer), the use of DNA markers and DNA based methods of disease characterization/ diagnosis, invitro vegetative propagation of plants, embryo rescue and transfer, wide crossing, exploitation of protoclonal and somaclonal variation etc.

Keeping in view the benefits of these techniques Agri. Biotechnology Research Institute was established in December, 1987 as a development project and was later on transferred to non-development side in 1994. Initially the work was started on wheat, sugarcane, maize, barley and rice on different aspects like somaclonal variation, anther culture, micropropagation etc. Due to limited facilities the work was curtailed to wheat and sugarcane crops on creation of genetic variation, exploitation of tissue cultural variation, doubled haploid breeding in wheat and micropropagation of sugarcane. Research work on modern biotechnological tools (genomics and transformation) was started with the approval of another development project entitled “Upscaling of Agri. Biotechnology Research Institute, AARI, Faisalabad” during 2005-2006. Work on marker assisted breeding, fingerprinting, genomics etc. is being carried out in this institute on regular basis. Physiological or morphological plant traits are governed by genes carried on chromosomes. The ability to monitor the presence or absence of such genes in plants is of great help to plant breeders. Varietal identification, purity testing, hybrid verification, disease diagnosis, tagging of genes resistant to various biotic and abiotic stresses, genome mapping, genetic diversity studies are being conducted using DNA markers. Molecular characterization studies on rice, wheat and sugarcane has been accomplished and will soon be initiated on other crop’s germplasm. Identification of DNA markers for leaf and stripe rusts in wheat is in progress and the work on tagging of rust resistant genes in our local wheat genotypes using published DNA markers for various rust alleles has also been initiated on advanced wheat lines obtained from Wheat Research Institute, Faisalabad; Barani Research Institute, Chakwal; Arid Zone Research Institute, Bhakkar and Regional Agricultural Research Institute, Bahawalpur. During 2009 Soil Bacteriology section was attached with this institute to put the microbiological and soil bacterial work on modern track. This section is mandated to conduct microbiological trials of soil plant relationships and to restore soil fertility through biological means.
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