Former VC SKUAST-K visits faculty of agriculture Wadura

Srinagar, June 27: Dr. Tej Partap, Former Vice-Chancellor SKUAST-K visited Faculty of Agriculture, Wadura Campus on Tuesday.
Dr. Partap is an internationally renowned policy and strategy expert of mountain farming affairs, mountain agriculture and organic agriculture development strategies.
He is currently serving as Chairman of the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) committee set up for the implementation of NEP-2020 in agricultural universities and heads the 6th Deans Committee for modification of farm education curriculums as per the new education policy.
A breakthrough leader, Prof. Partap carries with him a long experience of institutional leadership at national and international level particularly as Vice Chancellor of CSK Himachal Pradesh Agriculture University, Palampur for two terms; Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agriculture Sciences & Technology-Kashmir ; G.B. Pant University of Agriculture & Technology, Pantnagar and APG Shimla University, Shimla for one term each.
At international level, he served as Programme Leader at Mountain Agriculture Division, International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, Kathmandu. Dr. Tej Partap delivered a special lecture on “Motivational cum Mentoring Session” at the Conference Hall of Faculty. All the Heads of divisions, Scientists and more than 50 UG/PG students attended the lecture.
The lecture was organized by the Career Counseling & Placement Cell (CC&PC) Faculty of Agriculture, Wadura under World Bank-ICAR funded National Agricultural Higher Education Project (NAHEP) for the institutional development of SKUAST-K. In his lecture, Dr. Partap discussed some of the key challenges facing Indian agriculture today include, small and fragmented landholdings, climate change, lack of agricultural marketing and remunerative income. Despite the myriad of problems that farmers face, there are a number of ways that farmers can avoid or at least minimize their impact.
While technology is an obvious one, there are also solutions which are already available to the farmer. Some are: Organization of Farmer Clubs, Introduction of modern farming technology, increasing trends of crop diversification towards horticulture & cash crops, diversifying and expanding the area of niche crops, organic farming for safer inputs to produce safer foods in order to maintain health of ecosystem.
He emphasized on the scientists to prioritize their research methodologies on emerging trends of food safety, habitat engineering, nanotechnology and submit multi-disciplinary research projects. Dr. Partap advised the students to keep overcoming all the challenges, converting adversities into opportunities and motivate other students to focus on outcome based education and come up with Research based technologies.