State-of-the-art Infrastructure Facilities
Department of Agricultural Technology has purchased plant growth chambers and range of other equipment necessary for conducting plant tissue culture. Further, Department is equipped with the state-of-the-art infrastructure facilities namely a plant house and a greenhouse. Curriculum of the Bachelor of Biosystems Technology in Agriculture, the degree programme offered by the Department of Agricultural Technology consists of a range of courses related to crop technology where these facilities can be effectively utilized. Thus, students can design, and conduct experiments related to plant breeding, varietal improvement, planting material acclimatization, optimizing crop growth conditions, studying precision irrigation systems, growing of off-season crops and etc. Further, this facility can be extensively used in research & development activities of the higher degree programmes offered by the Department. Moreover, this will be a modern facility available in a state university in Sri Lanka.
High Throughput Screening / Bioactivity Testing Facility
High Throughput Screening (HTS) is a modern analytical technique widely used in detecting and quantifying biological, chemical and physical parameters of samples in micro titer (micro well) plates. This technique is extensively used in Research & Development especially in the fields of Bioassay Validation, Drug Discovery, Food Technology, Biotechnology, Cell Biology, Microbiology, Biochemistry, Quality Control and etc. The Faculty of Technology, University of Colombo has well established HTS or Bioactivity Testing Facility at the Department of Agricultural Technology. The Department has acquired all high-tech equipment relating to bioactivity testing namely multimode micro plate reader, high speed centrifuge, micro plate centrifuge, -80°C freezer, freeze dryer, shaking water baths, incubators, and full range of molecular biology equipment. Further, establishment of a fully furnished animal cell culture laboratory is also in progress which enables extending the research activities up to signal transduction pathways. Currently this facility is being used in the Department for both academic and research activities and will be used extensively for higher degree programmes offered by the Department in near future. This facility can also be utilized in services apart from the academic and research activities and therefore has a high commercial value. Most importantly, this is a modern facility established in a State University in Sri Lanka.