The visit was an interesting and effective practical source of information on biotechnology, biodiversity and its preservation, along with its importance and relevance on public health. To be more specific, the visit was planned for the public health students to identify variety of methods of preserving gene and genetic resources with its essentiality, acquire information on genetic technologies and their risk assessment, explore the biodiversity richness accounting their medicinal importance, various biotechnological methods developed for easier livelihood of people, disaster management, relationship of biodiversity, climate change and public health and many more.

National Agriculture Genetic Resource Centre (NAGRC), known as  Gene bank was established in 2010 AD (2066 BS) under the Nepal Agricultural Research Council (NARC) in Khumaltar premise. This is a national level office, with different branches thoroughout the country. NAGRC has been doing collection, identification, characterization, and regeneration of Agriculturally Produced Genetic Resources (APGRs) since its establishment. It emphasizes on agricultural genetic resources for food and nutritional security, livelihood enhancement, and economic growth of Nepal. There are more than 11,000 collections of APGRs in the Gene bank. These accessions include cereals, pseudo cereals, pulses, oilseeds and vegetable of orthodox seed whereas crops having recalcitrant seed are conserved in the field gene bank, on-farm gene bank and tissue bank as a whole. The APGRs have been collected, cleaned, processed, preserved and regenerated and characterized according to the standard procedures and norms used by scientists across the world.

Also, one of the special facilities in Gene Bank is Field Gene bank. In this system, government’s farm in area around the road and office buildings, community farms, botanical garden, culturally protected heritage sites are considered suitable locations. This is essential for those crop species which are having recalcitrant seed types and vegetative propagation along with apomictic crop species, meant for their conservation, characterization, evaluation and utilization. Therefore, Gene Bank not only preserves resources in a closed room but explores, experiments and promotes conservation of  variety of agricultural products in an open field.

Gene Bank holds peculiar importance in environmental health and public health. Different agricultural species contain different nutrition required for the body and such species are  preserved in the gene bank. Here it is possible to create foods with greater amount of minerals, vitamins and antioxidants. Thus, it assists to maintain dietary diversity resulting reduction in  the risk of malnutrition and other nutrition deficiency disorders in public. It  focuses on innovations for improving agricultural and health status of people through application of biotechnology in agriculture (production of transgenic and improved hybrid products, crops with better storing capacity and delayed rotting process, nutritional integration and richness also improving the quality, taste, color and texture of food). For instance, different pest resistant species are stored in gene bank, which if crossed with seeds of low resistant but highly productive crops gives highly productive and pest resistant crops. The conservation of biodiversity also promotes ecosystem balance in many ways.