Pandit Govind Ballabh Pant Memorial Lecture: II

the mainstays of paper-pulp industry, Obviously, this group of plants is versatile and
very useful but has not received the deserved attention, although it is important to
the economy, both at the village and national level.
It is high time that an Institute on Bamboo Research and Development be
established to give a fillip to this “poor man’s plant” by taking advantage of the
excellent biotechnological work already done in India. This is all the more necessary,
keeping in view the increasing imports of timber and paper pulp.
Biodiversity, Bioproductivity and Ecodevelopment
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Biodiversity exists at the level of an individual, population (interbreeding group of
individuals of a species), community (population of different species interacting in
the same habitat) and ecosystem (interacting groups of communities of plants,
animals and micro-organisms in a climatic zone). If ecosystems do not face threat of
natural cataclysmic changes or of human perturbating, these can be selfperpetuating
and auto-sustainable with only one outside input, namely, sunlight.
Biodiversity is the most important element of living systems and the three
cardinal processes that lead to and also regulate diversity are mutation,
recombination and natural selection (Fig.8). These processes are the basis of both
organic evolution and plant and animal breeding. The only difference is that in plant
and animal breeding, the selective factor is the human need which makes evolution
under such circumstances targeted and purposive, and accordingly, gains high
speed. However, in nature selective factors are the whole gamut of climatic and
adaphic changes, such as ice age, warm/ drought periods, comet strikes, volcanic
eruption dust and black-out of sun, extensive herbivore, disease, etc., singly or in
combination. Under natural conditions, evolution is non-purposive and opportunistic.
It leads to extinction of those biota that have no selective value in a particular
environment, and origin of those with a high selective value to the changed
environment, in other words, survival of the fittest.
The second half of twentieth century witnessed the discovery of the structure of
DNA by Watson and Crick (1953). DNA soon became the molecular and messenger
of life. With this, an era of molecular biology was ushered in, and chemistry of life
began to be increasingly understood both at molecular and at cellular levels. There
is now an increasing appreciation of the importance of biodiversity at the molecular
level. Its importance increases with the possibilities of transfer of genes across the
taxonomic and/or phylogenetic barriers. The classical case is the expression in
Escherichia coli of chemically synthesized gene for human insulin (Goeddel et. al
1979). Soon, bacteria become important as future factories for production of
products useful to human being: insulin is an example. Eli Lilly (USA) is now
marketing it under the name of Humulin. Similar interphylum transfers have also
taken place for pest resistance in crop plants. Thus, there has been progressive
widening of germplasm base and the frontiers of molecular biology for the good,
benefit and wellbeing of human race.
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