Large-scale manufacturing, processing, and handling of chemicals led to serious surface and subsurface soil contamination with a wide variety of hazardous and toxic organic chemicals in the environment. Because of their potential to bioaccumulate in living systems and their toxicity including their carcinogenicity, biotechnology is being considered as an emerging science for environmental protection. Such environmental pollutants can be solved by bioremediation and/or phytoremediation by the use of biological living organisms and green plants. Biotechnology can be used to transfer hyperaccumulating genes from natural accumulators to non-accumulator plants which serve as a fundamental part of bioremediation approaches for environmental protection.

Biological control with predators and parasitoids is currently the most promising alternative to control arthropod pests sustainably and is the most popular measure applied in organic farming and integrated pest management (IPM) programs. Biological control with predators and parasitoids has been successfully applied in many crops against several pests, but natural enemies often face impediments to the establishment of certain crops. There are public demands for a change in emphasis from chemical to biological control and need of the hour is to implement pollution-free bio-based methods the environmental wellbeing.

Solid waste disposal has comparatively bigger challenges than liquid waste management. There are consistent efforts by researchers to continuously develop new technologies for utilizing solid wastes, especially the plant biomass which represents a major part of the available solid wastes and represents a renewable source of energy and chemicals. Biomass can be converted to energy via microalgal-based biorefineries, and will prove a stepping-stone towards developing more advanced waste treatment technologies and sustainable energy systems that will lead to plenty of economic opportunities and healthier environment.

Agriculture biotechnology is striving to maintain healthy plants, minimize pesticide usage and optimize crop yields through developing stress-resistant/ tolerant varieties of plants. Conventional methods use agrochemicals for increasing the need for food supply, but agricultural biotechnology is used to replace or to supplement these agricultural practices which are safe to execute and eco-friendly. Sustainable crop production to meet the global food demand can only be possible if we use agricultural biotechnology for crop improvement and protection. Molecular breeding, Genetic engineering, and Integrated biotechnology approaches are the main focus for agricultural biotechnologists.

As the world faces significant energy supply and security challenges due to the dependence on petroleum and oil, the need for sustainable alternatives has received great attention. To achieve energy security and independence in the near future, and in the long run to prepare for the post-oil energy needs, liquid biofuels can significantly reduce our dependence on oil, create new jobs, improve the rural economy, reduce greenhouse emissions, and ensure energy security. Alongside biofuels, other multiple options, like solar, thermal and hydropower resources need to be investigated.

With the emergence of recent COVID-19 pandemic and the frequency of deaths reported so far, infectious diseases are taking the leading position accounting for more than 17 million deaths worldwide each year. In low income countries, Infectious diseases are still one of the leading causes of deaths, especially in young children. Infectious disease epidemiology is a practical science, concerned with minimizing the impact of pathogens on public health. Biotechnology offers radical alternatives to detect and enumerate the different infectious diseases.

Agri-business is the pivot to food security, job creation, and sustainable growth in developing countries. The realization of developing effective, robust, and efficient food chain in order to meet hunger and poverty is affirmation of the intents to meet SDG’s and increasing global food demand. Use of critical technologies provides the solution to such agriculture problems. Use of technologies can help farmers use scarce resources such as water, and external inputs like agrichemicals, more efficiently, effectively, and sparingly. There is a need to develop quantitative spatially explicit framework to identify the specialized cropping systems under current and future climate change scenarios.

An unprecedented pandemic has reached into every corner of the globe. Now more than ever, the need for effective public health interventions requires our full commitment to work together and consider health of all communities and nationalities equally important. The concept of One Health is also one of collaborative effort of many internal partners who are trying to develop better preventive and response strategies for combating global health concerns. Global collaboration and information sharing around the coronavirus pandemic has demonstrated humanity’s ability to focus on a problem and rapidly advance our collective scientific knowledge.

Bioinformatics and computational approaches greatly facilitate in analyzing, managing, and storing variety of biological data. The research in biotechnology especially that involving sequence data management, vaccine and drug design occurred at a speedy rate due to sophisticated bioinformatics tools and databases. Several tools and software are developed for the analysis and interpretation of complex biological systems. There are number of applications of bioinformatics viz. genome assembly, annotation, sequence analysis and alignment, molecular modeling, docking, dynamic simulation to accelerate the biotechnological research. It is expected that many future bioinformatics and computational innovations are likely to stimulate analysis of vast biological data produced by scientists around the world.