INTELLECTUAL CAPITALBuilding Competitive Edge with Innovation

Our innovation leadership stems from rich eight decades of science knowledge. Our expert team of scientists are continually undertaking research and collaborating with global institutions and academia to develop better products for delivering value to customers and focussing on Next Gen cutting-edge technologies. These innovations are ensuring our business are science-differentiated and sustainable in the long run.

SDGs impacted

Delivering peace of mind to farmers

In FY 2020-21, RICH launched two new products for Crop Protection that have gained popularity among farmers. Kriman, a fungicidal combination formulation for effective disease and resistance management in grape and tomato crops and provided yields improvement of about 10% in both the crops. Eevee, a combination insecticide and fungicide formulation, is a first of its kind product in India for rice and tomato for both insect pest and disease management. It gave an improved yield of about 10% in both.

Our R&D centres and their progress

TCL Innovation Centre (IC) – Pune

Key developments in FY 2020-21

Basic Chemistry Products

Development of iron premix technology for double fortified Salt

Specialty Products

Performance Materials

Qualification of HDS with leading tyre manufacturers
Development of new grade of Silica for oral care and elastomeric garment application

Nutrition Sciences

Development of synergistically acting symbiotics for immunity (human clinical trial done); long-chain oligofructose; and enzyme encapsulation technology with better thermo-stability to enhance feed shelf life
Development of cosmetic application of FOS for healthy skin
Development of natural extracts with high bioactives for food and pharma industry
Seeding of synthetic biology, creating a framework and identification of potential products

Way forward

Basic Chemistry Products

Development of new Salt category (i.e. pharmaceutical grade Salt) for consumer and industry needs
Commercialise iron premix technology

Specialty Products

Performance Materials

Continuing application support of current HDS grade Silica for better customer connect and market penetration
Development of Specialty Silica

Nutrition Sciences

Improve yield and reduce the variable cost for FOS
Developing technical capabilities in spray drying, protein and enzyme extraction, purification and characterisation

Agri Sciences

Innovation Centre – Bengaluru RICH (Crop Care)

Key developments in FY 2020-21

Basic Chemistry Products

Gap analysis exercise to strengthen innovation funnel
Strengthen platform technologies for customised water soluble fertiliser (WSF) formulations for foliar and fertigation applications

Launches

Kriman: A fungicide combination formulation for Chilli and Tomato
Eevee: An Insecticide and fungicide combination formulation for Rice and Tomato
Water Soluble Fertilisers: Aquafert Foliar – Vegetables & Aquafert Fertigation – Grapes
Micronutrients: Boron ethanolamine (Flowbor)
Plant Growth Regulator: GroSmart [Gibberellic acid 0.001%]

Way forward

Strengthening pipelines for Formulations, Reverse Engineering and Contract Manufacturing
New herbicide formulations with differentiated weed control and devoid of phytotoxicity
New Product concepts for Crop Nutrition and biopesticides
Flow chemistry capability
Enhance revenue contribution of new products in Crop Nutrition business to 20%+
Enhance presence across all segments of Specialty Fertilisers, especially WSF
Collaborations and alliances to build differentiated products
Innovative approaches to formulation by leveraging internal capabilities

Agri Sciences

Innovation Centre – Bengaluru (Seeds)

Key developments in FY 2020-21

GMS marker development and deployment in Cotton & Chilli
Artificial blast nursery for pearl millet
Innovative Field Rapid Generation Advancement (RGA) in Rice
In Planta GOT using markers-innovation

Launches

MM9344 in maize full maturity segment
MP7111 in pearl millet early maturity segment
MP7366 pearl millet hybrid got notified by ICAR and has high levels of Zn & Fe

Way forward

RGA technologies across crops
Building capabilities for ML tools by leveraging the CoE for data analytics and ML
Initiate product-driven projects and develop microbial Crop Care solution

163 Cumulative patents filed

47Plant Variety Protection (PVP) in the process of registration under PPV & FRA

4Publications in peer-reviewed journals

New Initiative at the Innovation Centre

Capability building in synthetic biology – simulation, gene synthesis and overexpression for enzymes
Established applied computational biology Centre of Excellence (CoE) to leverage the data analytics across the R&D centres to expedite R&D process
Established an IPR (CoE) to leverage the IPR function across business and R&D centres
Formed Champions of Change teams to drive transformation in the areas of happiness at work, collaboration, safety and sustainability

Cotton: GMS Forward breeding (FB) strategies and methods

Developed for rapid line development. FB method successfully validated in F2 and F3 breeding cycles using ~9,000 segregants from multiple pedigree crosses (close to 100% selection accuracy was identified). This integrated marker breeding method can reduce ~50% of the time for GMS line development and save huge cost for commercial hybrid Seed production through GMS every year.