India develops own Covid-19 test kit, names it after Satyajit Ray’s ‘Feluda’

India today chose to name their home-developed Covid-19 test kit after Satyajit Ray's immortal fictional character 'Feluda'.

State-owned laboratory Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology (IGIB) and India's leading industrial house Tata Sons Pvt Ltd signed a MoU this evening for licensing the knowhow of FNCAS9 Editor-Linked Uniform Detection Assay (FELUDA) for rapid detection of coronavirus, according to a statement.

Ray's Feluda, aka Prodosh Mitter, the super sleuth with a ready wit, is the lead character in two of his films titled "Sonar Kella" and "Joi Baba Felunath" essayed by legendary Bengali actor Soumitra Chatterjee.

The technology used in developing the Feluda kit, which can be deployed for mass field testing of Covid-19 as early as the end of May, "is a completely indigenous scientific invention," the statement said.

The "main advantages of the Feluda kit is its affordability, relative ease of use and non-dependency on expensive Q-PCR machines," it also said.

The Feluda test kit is a cutting- edge technology for detection of genomic sequence of novel coronavirus by using a test protocol that is simple to administer and easy to interpret, enabling results in relatively lesser time compared to other tests, said Banmali Agrawala, president of Infrastructure, Defence and Aerospace at Tata Sons Pvt Ltd.