Technology Projects > Marine BioTechnology OCEAN SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY FOR ISLANDS > Introduction

The Ocean is considered as the cradle of life, where life originated 3.5 billion years ago and formed a huge treasure-house of life and resources. Ocean has provided food and resources from time immemorial and has played a pivotal role in shaping cultural, social, and economic evolution of mankind across the globe. The unfathomable leaps made by Science and Technology in the last decade especially in the field of Biotechnology, has further helped in large-scale utilisation of marine resources. The field of ocean science and technology has witnessed steady progress in India and has gathered a lot of momentum recently. The National Institute of Ocean Technology (NIOT) is among the premier institutes in the country to develop reliable indigenous technology towards harnessing of marine living resources thorough advanced engineering and biotechnological tools. The research objective of Marine Biotechnology group of NIOT is directed towards four major activities viz. Marine Algal Biotechnology, Marine Microbial Biotechnology and Open Sea Cage Culture with the following objectives:

  • Isolation, identification of potential marine algal species, development of mass culture, harvesting, dewatering and extraction techniques for the production of nutraceuticals and biochemicals.
  • Isolation, culture of deep sea microbes, extraction, purification, and characterization of novel secondary metabolites for industrial, biomedical and environmental applications.
  • Design, development, and testing of sea cages suitable for Indian seas, and demonstration of open sea cage culture of commercial important finfishes for socio economic development of coastal fishers
  • Establishment of land-based Ballast Water Treatment Technologies - Test Facility for testing and validation of ballast water treatment systems

Besides this, the group is also engaged in monitoring of coastal water quality in Andaman and environmental impact assessment studies for various developmental programmes of Andaman Administration