New Delhi

India's worst cyclone this century, which ripped through the eastern state of Orissa on 29 October, flooded a nuclear accelerator lab, wiped out a botanical garden, and crushed the very radar system used to detect it.

The cyclone is also feared to have destroyed rice germplasm in the gene bank of the Central Rice Research Institute (CRRI) in Cuttack. One official estimates the damage at US$8–10 million.

CRRI's rice gene bank had about 22,000 collections. Of these, the 5,000 or so varieties grown in experimental plots were washed away, says CRRI director Shanti Bhushan Lodh.

The viability of the remaining seeds, which are stored in a refrigerated module at 4°C, is not known. But Rajendra Singh Paroda, head of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, says: “We expect the seeds to be unharmed, as no water had entered the module.”

Harder to replace will be the losses at the Regional Plant Resources Centre, one of the world's largest botanical gardens, on the outskirts of the state capital, Bhubaneswar.

Its director, Premananda Dash, says the centre lost its entire germplasm of bamboo, palms, cacti and medicinal plants, and its collection of ferns, ornamental trees, shrubs and trees. “More than 20,000 tissue cultures have been swept away and equipment worth $1 million lost,” he says. “It will take eight to ten years to restore the centre.”

The lost radar system was located at Paradip port. It was one of three warning radars on the east coast of India operated by the Indian Meteorological Department with the capability of detecting cyclone formations up to 400 km away.

At the Institute of Nuclear Physics in Bhubaneswar, the experimental hall of the 3-MeV ‘pellatron’ accelerator was flooded. The institute's library has disappeared, but Valangiman Ramamurthi, secretary to the Department of Science and Technology, says that the accelerator “is intact”.