Tour Program of Modern Laboratories, Uttarakhand

What is the Tour Program of Modern Laboratories?

The Tour Program of Modern Laboratories is an education and awareness activity of the Uttarakhand Council for Biotechnology (UCB), the state's nodal biotechnology body, based at Biotech Bhavan, Haldi, Pantnagar, in Udham Singh Nagar district. Under the programme, students, researchers and farmers are taken on guided visits to UCB's modern laboratories so that they can see advanced research activity, current instrumentation and new technologies with their own eyes rather than only in a textbook.

UCB was established in February 2003 as the State Biotechnology Programme (SBP) at Haldi, Pantnagar, and was renamed the Uttarakhand Council for Biotechnology in 2014. Its stated purpose is to carry out research, development and extension work matched to the state's own requirements: in particular, to put Uttarakhand's rich biodiversity and medicinal-plant wealth to work by supporting the commercial cultivation of rare plants, improving farmer livelihoods, supplying raw material to the pharmaceutical industry and conserving biodiversity at the same time. Alongside its laboratory work, UCB runs Biotechnology Education, Popularisation and Awareness activity, and the laboratory tour programme belongs to that extension arm.

The reasoning behind an exposure visit is straightforward. Biotechnology is invisible work. A farmer in a Kumaon village who has heard that tissue culture can multiply a rare medicinal plant, or that vegetables can be grown without soil, has no way to judge what that means until he stands in the room where it happens. A school student in Pithoragarh who has read one chapter on genetic engineering has never seen a PCR machine. The tour closes that gap in an afternoon, and UCB uses it to pull the state's students toward biotechnology education and research and to pull its farmers toward technologies they can actually adopt.

What do visitors actually see?

Visitors are shown the laboratories of UCB's Centre of Excellence for Mountain Biotechnology (CEMB), which according to UCB comprises five specialised laboratories:

1. Plant Tissue Culture Research Laboratory: where plants are multiplied from small pieces of tissue in sterile culture, the technique behind large-scale propagation of rare and high-value medicinal and horticultural species. This is the unit farmers find most immediately relevant.
2. Environmental Biotechnology Laboratory: work on biological approaches to waste, effluent and soil and water quality problems.
3. Molecular Biology and Genetic Engineering Laboratory, DNA-level work, markers, and the instrumentation students usually meet only in diagrams.
4. Advance Bioinformatics Laboratory, the computational side of biology, sequence and data analysis, which is often the least understood part of the subject for visiting students.
5. Hydroponic and Soilless Farming Laboratory, growing crops in nutrient solution without soil, a technology with real application in a hill state where cultivable land is scarce and fragmented.

UCB also operates its Patwadanger centre and the Bhauwala (Bhagwanpur) campus in addition to the Pantnagar headquarters, so a group's itinerary may depend on which site is nearest and what is available on the day.

Who is eligible for the laboratory tour programme?

You can take part if:

• You are a student; school, undergraduate or post-graduate — in Uttarakhand, particularly in science, agriculture or life-science streams.
• You are a research scholar or teacher who wants to see the facilities or bring a class.
• You are a farmer or a member of a farmer producer organisation, self-help group or krishi vigyan kendra group interested in tissue culture, medicinal plants or hydroponics.
• You come as part of an organised group through an institution, with a letter from the principal, head of department or sponsoring officer.

You cannot apply / are not eligible if:

• You are seeking a cash benefit, grant, subsidy or loan. The Tour Program of Modern Laboratories provides an exposure visit only; there is no money attached to it and no financial assistance can be claimed under it.
• You want admission to a training or dissertation programme. Those are separate UCB programmes with their own eligibility to 30-, 45- and 90-day short-term skill training for graduates and post-graduates, and a 180-day dissertation reserved for post-graduate students, and applying for a tour does not put you in the queue for them.
• You are asking for a visit without institutional backing and outside any scheduled group, in which case UCB will normally attach you to a group rather than arrange a separate tour.
• You want to use the laboratories for your own experiments. A tour is a guided visit, not laboratory access; bench work is only available through the training and dissertation route.

What documents are required?

How to apply for a tour of the modern laboratories

Because the programme runs on request rather than on a published calendar, the route is institutional and short:

1. Decide the group and the purpose. Fix roughly how many people will come, a class, a research group, a farmer cluster, and what you most want them to see, for example tissue culture and hydroponics for a farmer group.
2. Write to UCB. Send a request letter on your institution's letterhead to the Uttarakhand Council for Biotechnology, Biotech Bhavan, Haldi, Pantnagar, Udham Singh Nagar, Uttarakhand 263145, or email statebiotech@rediffmail.com, stating the group's background, the number of visitors, an accompanying teacher or officer, and two or three possible dates.
3. Telephone UCB to confirm. Call 05944-230567 a few days after sending the letter to confirm receipt and to fix a date that suits laboratory availability. Laboratories are working research units, so dates depend on what experiments are running.
4. Attach the participant list and any forwarding letter the office asks for, and carry identity documents on the day for entry to the campus.
5. Visit on the agreed date. Reach on time with the whole group together, as the tour is conducted with a guide; the group meets its own travel cost.
6. Follow up afterwards if participants want to go further; ask about the short-term skill training or dissertation programme, whose forms are on the UCB website under Forms / Guidelines and Policies.

How to check the status of your request

There is no online status tracker for the programme. Confirm your request by telephoning 05944-230567 or emailing statebiotech@rediffmail.com, quoting the date of your letter and the name of your institution. Where the request went through a college, the head of department is usually informed of the confirmed date first, so ask there as well. Confirm again a day or two before the visit, since a laboratory schedule can change.

Why a request may not be granted

• No proposed date or group size given, so the office cannot schedule anything.
• Laboratory not available on the requested date because research work is in progress; UCB will normally offer an alternative date rather than refuse.
• Group too large to move safely through working laboratories, in which case UCB may ask you to split it across two visits.
• No institutional backing where the visit is for a single individual.
• Request confused with a training application, which is processed under a different procedure and returned if sent on the wrong form.

Sending a clear letter with dates, numbers and a named accompanying teacher or officer avoids nearly all of these.

Key facts and contact

• Implementing body: Uttarakhand Council for Biotechnology (UCB), Biotech Bhavan, Haldi, Pantnagar, Udham Singh Nagar, Uttarakhand 263145.
• Established: February 2003 as the State Biotechnology Programme, renamed UCB in 2014.
• Facilities shown: the 5 laboratories of the Centre of Excellence for Mountain Biotechnology.
• Beneficiaries: students, researchers, teachers and farmers.
• Benefit: a guided exposure visit: no cash grant.
• Portal: ucb.ac.in
• Telephone: 05944-230567
• Email: statebiotech@rediffmail.com

For queries or grievances about a visit, contact UCB directly on its listed number or by email, or route the request through your college or your block agriculture office, which is often faster for a farmer group.

Note on verification: UCB's identity, its Pantnagar location, its contact details, its 2003 establishment and 2014 renaming, and the five laboratories of the Centre of Excellence for Mountain Biotechnology are drawn from UCB's own website. The programme's specific name and its purpose of giving students, researchers and farmers exposure to modern laboratories come from the scheme reference. UCB does not publish a dedicated page for this tour programme with a fixed calendar, seat limit, fee or formal application form, so the practical details above describe the institutional route that applies and should be confirmed with UCB by telephone before you plan a visit.