The Ministry of Science and Technology has opened a new facility called SPROUT (SpeedSeed Phenotyping and Resource Optimization for Unified Trait Analysis) at the National Institute of Plant Genome Research in New Delhi. Union Minister Dr Jitendra Singh inaugurated it on 15 September 2026. The facility will help scientists develop crop varieties that can survive changing weather patterns and harsh conditions.
How the facility works and what it will do
SPROUT is a controlled-environment facility that operates throughout the year, independent of seasons. It allows researchers to test how crops perform under different environmental stress conditions such as drought, floods and salinity. The facility uses high-speed methods to evaluate plant traits and test new breeding lines, mutant varieties and genome-edited crops.
The facility initially focuses on chickpea but can be used for other crops. It connects advances in genomics and gene editing with precise testing of plant characteristics. This speeds up the journey from discovering useful genes to developing improved crop varieties that farmers can grow.
The institute has also developed a separate technology called SpeedSeed for accelerated breeding. In chickpea, this can reduce the generation cycle to approximately 40 days, compared to much longer conventional breeding timelines. Used together, SPROUT and SpeedSeed can significantly reduce the time needed to develop and test new crop varieties.
Since 2014, the Department of Biotechnology has supported over 300 agricultural biotechnology projects. These efforts have produced more than 50 improved crop varieties across rice, wheat, chickpea, mustard, vegetables and forestry species with enhanced tolerance to drought, floods, salinity, pests and diseases. Seventeen climate-resilient rice varieties developed under a genomics programme are now grown across nearly 15 lakh hectares.
What this means for you
If you are a farmer, this facility could eventually lead to crop varieties better suited to your region’s weather challenges. If you work in agricultural research or biotechnology, the facility represents infrastructure designed to accelerate your work from laboratory discovery to practical farm solutions. For consumers, faster development of climate-resilient crops could improve food security and reduce vulnerability to weather-related harvest failures.