The India-UK Nitrogen Fixation Centre (IUNFC) was launched on 6th October 2016 at the Indian Institute of Soil Science (IISS), Bhopal, India. IUNFC, a virtual joint centre (VJC), is a £1.3M, three year programme funded by the Newton-Bhabha Fund, the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) in India and the BBSRC in the UK. IUNFC’s aim is to improve nutrition from rain-fed legume crops in India through cutting-edge biological research into nitrogen fixation.
Dept. of Plant Science’s Philip Poole, Vinoy Ramachandran, Beatriz Jorrin, Andrzej Tkacz and Alison East, along with UK collaborators, Prof. Ray Dixon (John Innes Centre, Norwich) and Dr Euan James (James Hutton Institute, Dundee), travelled to India for the occasion. After IUNFC’s ceremonial launch, the inaugural meeting was held between UK scientists from the ten laboratories involved in this project, seven of which are geographically scattered over India. IUNFC’s second annual meeting will be held in Oxford in Sept. 2017.
