The Skolkovo Foundation Backs BNRU Innovation

The Skolkovo Innovation Support Foundation committee selected one of our team's projects for participation in their program. The decision was taken at the 'Start-up Village' in Skolkovo, where around 8,000 inventors, scientists and entrepreneurs from 15 countries in the CIS came to showcase their projects and ideas.

Our project concerned the automation of measuring growth in the micro-clonal propagation of plants in in vitro conditions. This process avoids manual measurements of the growth and development indices of plants, and also improves accuracy when analysing in vitro processes. The project was awarded a development grant of ₽2,000,000 (≈US$30,000).
Project Manager Yuri Maslakov, a post-graduate student at the Department of Mathematical and Software Information Systems, explained,
“These days, micro-clonal propagation of plants is widespread, because it allows you to harvest in a short time. The lab assistant inserts the measurement instrument into the test tube containing the plant for 30 seconds, which is enough time for it to gather all the necessary data, and that is stored in an accessible database. Photographic and video evidence of the emergence of infected and stressed plants can then be tracked by scientists from anywhere in the world.”