National Facility for Marine Cyanobacteria a Department of Biotechnology sponsored facility has been selected to participate in prestigious Indian Polar Scientific Research Expedition in Arctic and Antarctic. Dr. D. Prabaharan, Director has participated in both polar expeditions under the aegis of National Centre for Antarctic and Ocean Reserarch, Minstry of Earth Sciences

In order to explore cyanobacterial diversity in north and south poles of the globe, NFMC was fortunate enough to participate in Arctic summer IV expeditions (2011 & 2013), and 33rd Indian scientific expedition to Antarctica on August 2014. Cyanobacteria samples were collected from terrestrial and aquatic habitats of the Himadri-Ny-Alesund the northern most permanent settlement of the world is situated at 78˚55’28.55’’ N 11˚55’24.49’’E on the west coast of Spitsbergen, Northern Arctic and Maitri- Schirmacher Oasis, is a rocky hill range, about 17 km long in E-W trend (bounded by Eastern longitudes 11° 22' 40" and 11° 54' 20") and about 0.7 km to 3.3 km wide (bounded by Southern latitudes 70° 43' 50" and 70° 46' 40") southern Antarctica. The samples were frozen at -20°C during transportation to the laboratory. Isolation and purification of samples will be carried out by conventional methods. The pure isolates and deposited in psychrophilic germplasm of NFMC maintained at 4±2°C and grown at 15±2°C.

Indian Arctic Expeditions - Summer Batch II at Himadri Station, NY-Alesund(2011 & 2014)

33^rd Indian Antarctic Scientific Expedition in South Pole (Maitri, India Station) (2014)