Infrastructure and Research Areas

RESEARCH ACTIVITIES

  • Diversity analysis (biological, molecular, chemical)
  • Multispectral, hyperspectral, LiDAR and drone-based remote sensing
  • Conservation, multiplication and utilization
  • Creating knowledgebase-databases, repository (Internationally recognized Herbarium - acronym PLP)
  • Climate change studies: Free Air CO2 Enrichment (FACE) & Free Air Temperature increase (FATI) facility, Simulation modeling, Long Term Ecological Research sites
  • Understanding plant functions, adaptive mechanisms
  • Regulatory pathways, gene functions, enzymes
  • Metabolic engineering and synthetic biology
  • Multi-omic studies (genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics)
  • Chemical Fingerprinting and DNA barcoding for authentication of plants
  • Green and sustainable chemistry
  • Natural product chemistry
  • Bacteria, Fungi and Algae prospection
  • Biofuels, Biopolymers
  • Natural fibers
  • Nanobiology
  • Bioinformatics, Computational and Systems biology

INFRASTRUCTURE

  • Next-generation sequencing system PacBio RSII and NovaSeq 6000
  • Proteomic facility with MALDI-ToF, MALDI ToF-ToF and Ion Mobility Q-ToF LC/MS
  • Metabolomic facility: HPLCs, GC with headspace, GCMS, UPLC MS-MS, NMR-300, 600 Mhz, super critical extraction
  • Bioinformatics facility (high end workstations, servers, Linux cluster for parallel computing algorithms, distributed computing)
  • Microscopes (Scanning Electron, Transmission Electron, Atomic Force, Confocal, Laser Assisted Dissection, Hi-end Stereozoom with Micromanipulator)
  • Walk-in plant growth chambers
  • Plant identification, soil testing, mapping (RS-GIS platform)
  • Hydroponic, Aeroponic and Vertical aeroponic facilities
  • cGMP Protein Facility
  • Large scale tissue culture facility for heeng and saffron (34000 flasks capacity)
  • State-of-the-art geoinformatics facility
  • Facilities for virus indexing, heavy metal toxicity testing and pesticide residue analysis
  • Food processing and analytic facilities (encapsulation, extruder, flaking and freeze drying units, cereal puffer, carbohydrate analyzer and capillary electrophoresis)
  • Tissue and cell culture facilities (micro-propagation culture lab, secondary metabolites production in bioreactors, transgenic production, and containment)
  • Farms and polyhouses for domestication and development of agrotechnologies of ornamentals, aromatic and medicinal plants and high value crops