India to renew commitment to Italy’s Elettra facilities

Minister of State Jitendra Singh visits Elettra Sincrotrone, in Trieste, Italy.

India has committed to contribute at least €7 million (about ₹73 crore) over the next five years, beginning in the current financial year 2026-27, towards the Elettra 2.0 programme, Union Science Minister Jitendra Singh said in Italy on Saturday (November 14, 2026).

Elettra Sincrotrone Trieste is an international research centre in Trieste, Italy, that operates a synchrotron light source — a facility in which electrons are accelerated to nearly the speed of light and made to emit extremely bright X-rays and other forms of electromagnetic radiation.

These beams allow scientists to examine the structure and properties of matter at the atomic and molecular scales, with applications ranging from materials science and nanotechnology to biology, medicine, archaeology and cultural heritage.

The centre operates two major facilities: Elettra, a third-generation synchrotron light source, and FERMI, a free-electron laser that produces exceptionally bright, ultrashort light pulses.

Its scientific importance lies in giving researchers access to experimental tools that can reveal the structure, composition and behaviour of matter with extraordinary precision, including processes occurring over extremely short timescales, according to a factsheet on the Elettra website.

India’s participation will support the development of research infrastructure and human resource capacity, marking a “significant new phase” in the longstanding scientific partnership between India and Italy, an accompanying press statement said.

India and Italy have collaborated on research for at least 25 years, with Indian scientists having conducted experiments at Elettra since 1998 and continuing to use its facilities. India is currently the second-largest user of Elettra after Italy.

Elettra has received around 1,100 proposals for experiments from Indian research groups. India ranks second in the number of proposals submitted, after Italy, which submitted 54,140 proposals, and ahead of France, with 1,098 proposals.

Under the Elettra 2.0 programme, the existing India-centric XRD2 and Xpress beamlines will be decommissioned and replaced by two new beamlines with enhanced capabilities. These will comprise a microfocus beamline for macromolecular crystallography, to be called micro-XRD (μXRD), and a beamline for high-pressure diffraction, to be called Xpress Superbend (Xpress-SB).

The Department of Science and Technology (DST) had jointly supported the construction of the two existing sophisticated diffraction beamlines, XRD2 and Xpress, with a contribution of about ₹22 crore, alongside the Italian side’s contribution. Both beamlines were jointly inaugurated on October 20, 2016.