Current Affairs Question - 14 November 2019

Explanation :

• Innovations for Defence Excellence (iDEX) was launched by the Government in april 2018, primarily aims at creation of an ecosystem to foster innovation and technology development in Defence and Aerospace by engaging industries including MSMEs, start-ups, individual innovators, R&D institutes & academia, and provide them grants/funding and other support to carry out R&D which has good potential for future adoption for Indian defence and aerospace needs.
• iDEX is funded and managed by a ‘Defence Innovation Organization (DIO)’ which has been formed as a ‘not for profit’ company as per Section 8 of the Companies Act 2013 for this purpose, by the two founder members i.e. Defence Public Sector Undertakings (DPSUs) - HAL & BEL.
• iDEX functions as the executive arm of DIO, carrying out all the required activities while DIO will provide high level policy guidance to iDEX.

Key Functions

• Co-Innovation/co-creation
• Piloting of candidate technologies in important platforms
• Indigenization of various defence and aerospace related platforms being manufactured in the country.

Explanation :

• The International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture was adopted by the Thirty-First Session of the Conference of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations on 3^rd November, 2001.
• The Treaty’s truly innovative solution to access and benefit sharing, the Multilateral System, puts 64 most important crops – crops that together account for 80 percent of the food derived from plants – into an easily accessible global pool of genetic resources that is freely available to potential users in the Treaty’s ratifying nations for some uses.
• There are 146 contracting parties to the Treaty (143 states and the European Union) as of July 2019.

Aim

• Recognizing the enormous contribution of farmers to the diversity of crops that feed the world;
• Establishing a global system to provide farmers, plant breeders and scientists with access to plant genetic materials;
• Ensuring that recipients share benefits they derive from the use of these genetic materials with the countries where they have been originated.