In yet another instance of public-private partnership in India, luxury carmaker DaimlerChrysler has inked a pact with the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) to produce bio-diesel in India.

The five year project would cost 600,000 Euros, 200,000 of which is to be contributed by the German Government and the rest by the company. The project will focus on trial operation with bio-diesel extracted from ‘Jatropha’ plants, which are cultivated on eroded soils.

The trial will take place on a ‘C Class’ Mercedes car in October, DaimlerChrysler managing director Hans-Michael Huber said. The basic idea behind the project was to demonstrate the feasibility of the ‘Jatropha’ bio-diesel in modern vehicles, CSIR director general R. A. Mashelkar was quoted as saying.

Investing consciously in the production-oriented research programmes and projects is the only way out for the Indian investors to compete in the global market, feels the director general of center for scientific investigations and research.

He also stresses upon the need to update our professional knowledge of getting patents, copyrights and designs, in order to sustain in the world market. Besides modernizing the private laboratories and concentrating more on research projects, the CSIR chief has also appealed to the Indian business community to initiate a dialogue with the state-owned national laboratories. “Knowledge is creator of wealth,” he asserts.