The Annual Review Meeting (2017-18) of the Consortium Research Platform on Vaccines and Diagnostics was held at ICAR-CIBA during 30-31, October, 2018 under the chairmanship of Dr. Joykrushna Jena, Deputy Director General (Fisheries ) and DDG in-charge Animal Sciences, ICAR. The CRP on Vaccines and Diagnostics is one of the flagship programmes of ICAR to augment the production potential of crop, animal and fisheries sector by developing state of the art diagnostics and vaccines. Dr. Ashok Kumar, ADG (AH), ICAR, Dr. K. K. Vijayan, Director, CIBA, Dr. Aniket Sanyal, Co-ordinator, CRP on V & D, sectoral coordinators and all Principal investigators under CRP on Vaccines and Diagnostics participated in the event. During the inaugural programme, Dr. Jena, DDG (AS), stressed the importance of health management in crop, animal and fisheries sciences. He pointed out the economic losses due to FMD and brucellosis in livestock sector and underlined the importance of developing cost-effective and reliable diagnostics and vaccines for these diseases. He also highlighted the contribution of fisheries sector to the Indian GDP and economy. Dr. Ashok Kumar, ADG (AH) insisted on the cross-sectoral interaction among the scientists and praised the efforts of the scientists for striving to bring out the technologies. He thanked ICAR-CIBA for organising the annual review meeting. Dr. K. K. Vijayan, Director, CIBA, stressed upon the sharing of infrastructure established under the consortium among the partner institutes for maximum utilization of the resources. He described the meeting as a unique gathering of expertise across the sectors of agriculture, veterinary and fisheries and mentioned the need for balancing basic research along with applied and strategic research programmes. Dr. Aniket Sanyal, Coordinator of CRP on Vaccines and Diagnostics described the overall functioning of the project and highlighted the importance of this platform. Two external experts, Dr. K.S. Palaniswami, Former Director (Research), TANUVAS and Dr. Malathi, Adjunct Professor, Department of Plant Pathology, TNAU, Coimbatore were invited to review the projects and to give the future directions.
The progress of 34 research projects was reviewed during the two days exercise. Principal investigators form 16 ICAR research institutes, five fisheries institutes, four animal science institutes and seven crop science institutes, participated in the meeting and presented the progress and the work plan for the coming years. Dr.M.Makesh, Principal Scientist and fisheries sector coordinator, coordinated the meeting and Dr P K Patil, Principal Scientist proposed the vote of thanks.