Pir Mehr Ali Shah Arid Agriculture University Rawalpindi (PMAS-AAUR), Agency for Barani Area Development (ABAD) and International Center for Agriculture in Dry Areas (ICARDA) would work together for introducing latest technologies in agriculture. This was decided in a meeting held at PMAS-AAUR between Prof Dr Rai Niaz Ahmad, Vice Chancellor (VC) PMAS-AAUR, Tariq Javed Malik, Director General (DG) ABAD and Dr Abdul Majeed, Country Representative ICARDA here on Wednesday.
The participants said that this initiative would improve the economic well being of the farming community and strengthen economy. They also stressed the need for enhancing the outreach activities for educating the farmers in order to increase agricultural productivity of the country.
It was also decided that Model Farm with latest agricultural technologies will be establish at PMAS-AAUR Research Farm to give awareness to the farming community to make their practices compatible to the modern practices. All the participants agreed to exchange scientists, scientific literature among the institutes and emphasised the need of rainwater harvesting and drip irrigation.
Prof Dr Rai Niaz said that we could increase agriculture production by using mechanised farming instead of traditional methods and University will help the farming community in getting new technologies so that they could increase per acre production. Ahmad Ali Zafar, Additional Secretary, Agricultural Department, government of Punjab visited PMAS-AAUR and met the chancellor.
VC briefed Ahmad Ali Zafar about the research and development activities of the university. Dr Niaz Ahmad also informed that varsity was facing financial problems in order to provide practical training to the farming community and to start new development projects. He hailed the financial support of Punjab government for the projects which could be helpful to the local farmer community.
Additional Secretary said that Pakistan was facing agricultural productivity challenge due to lack of attention and resources and urged the scientists to develop innovative solutions for the betterment of small farmers. He also lauded the efforts of Arid University and expressed his satisfaction on the pace of development done by the university scientists. The secretary also visited university Hydroponics Plant and said that university should try to deliver this technology to the small farmers in order to ensure food security in Pakistan.
