The Bharat Innovates 2026 National Basecamp was inaugurated at the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar (IITGN), marking a significant milestone in India’s efforts to identify, strengthen, and globally position its most promising deep-tech innovations. Held from December 18 to 20, 2025, the three-day event brings together approximately 400 startups and research-led innovations that have been shortlisted through a rigorous national screening process. Organised under the aegis of the Ministry of Education and the Office of the Principal Scientific Adviser (PSA) to the Government of India, and coordinated jointly by the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IITB) and IITGN, the event saw attendance from scientific luminaries, founders, business leaders, venture capitalists, investors, and sci-tech enthusiasts. 

Speakers at the inaugural session highlighted the programme’s role in strengthening research commercialisation, industry–academia linkages, and policy-backed innovation ecosystems. The closed-door pitching sessions and open deep tech exhibition showcased Innovations spanning 13 strategic domains, including AI, semiconductors, energy, healthcare, manufacturing, and space technologies. The Basecamp serves as a critical mentoring and evaluation stage ahead of the International Showcase to be held next year in France, where Indian technologies will take their place on the global stage. 

Parasitic plants cause losses of over a billion dollars in crop losses each year, yet they rarely attack their own roots. Researchers from Japan have uncovered how these plants avoid self-attack. They identified a key gene, PjUGT72B1, that functions as a molecular switch that neutralizes a plant’s own signals that trigger parasitic structure formation. This self-recognition mechanism could help in engineering crops to appear as kin, avoiding attacks by parasitic weeds.