INA
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Achievements
INA's successful launch and great perspectives are indicated by the magnitude of the research funds raised from 15 competitive and structural EU and GSRT programs reaching about 1M€, and the contract money paid by the industry and other organizations reaching 80,48 K€, during the first two years of real operation. While an extra 0,5 M€ is already approved and contracted for funding that is expected to start within the next few months. It is worth noticing that this funding capacity was displayed in a very negative environment for agrobiotechnology in Europe, especially regarding GMOs. During this short period of operation INA has established collaboration with 11 academic and research institutions and laboratories in Greece and 72 from abroad, and has collaboration in research programs with 20 Greek companies.
Know-How
In parallel with the high-quality basic and applied research, INA has developed and offers services to the productive sector, public and private institutions, industries and ministries. More specifically INA has developed and offers services for:
* GMO Biodiagnostic Detection in Plant Material and Foods.
* Protocol for Prion detection (mad cow's disease)Future products and services are under development in several other fields including:
* Combination of micropropagaion and micrografting for high quality low cost grafted vegetables
* Genomic technologies and breeding for stress tolerance in plants particularly drought
* Epigenetic modifications and gene inactivation in plants
* Homeotic genes as targets for yield and quality improvement
* Molecular mapping, molecular breeding and applications of bioinformatics in assessing biodiversity and breeding.Strategy plan – Perspectives
INA's research activities mainly cover the field of Agrobiotechnology in Greece. The institute can support agricultural and biological research, and the Greek agriculture sector, as it is reinforced with new facilities, infrastructure, equipment and well-trained talented scientific personnel able to conduct research and apply the new findings in product development and services. INA had to be established and develop under difficult circumstances that although encouraged certain agro-biotech applications, like molecular breeding and biodiagnostic technologies, they put severe hurdles in genetic engineering and its applications for plant improvement in Europe and in our country. INA has perfected and tested protocols in order to apply genetic engineering techniques for plant improvement as soon as the environment become supportive (legislation, public acceptance). INA's research will focus on biosafety issues for agrobiotechnology products. Specific attention will be paid on the selection of criteria for safe use, and improvement of traceability and detection methodologies for imported products. Finally, INA will increase its efforts towards the development of agrobiotechnology applications that do not require genetic modification, while remaining highly important in agricultural research, such as genomics molecular diagnostics, biodiversity assessment and conservation, and molecular breeding among others.
In a recent (September 2005) nation-wide evaluation scheme carried out by an external review panel , on behalf of the Hellenic Ministry of Development, all institutes of CERTH were granted with an Excellence Award, making CERTH one of the most prominent research institutions in the country, with a huge potential for growth . In particular, INA has excelled in scientific results and fund-raising performance, considering its short history. An additional benefit of the proposed institution is its strategic location in south-east Europe , with a strong position for coordination of research policy in the European Research Area and close proximity to rapidly developing Associated States , with huge potential and a highly skilled workforce.