Need to adopt Chinese model of education stressed

Agri scientists have stressed the need to adopt model of education of China, having a university town where various universities are operating in competitive environment. Malaysia, Turkey and China had made tremendous progress in every field because of education and hardworking, they added.
Addressing the one-day seminar entitled "Role of Botanical Science in Agricultural Development" arranged by the department at New Senate Hall, they pointed out that the Pakistan Council for Science and Technology ranks the Department of Botany, University Of Agriculture, Faisalabad, second best department after Karachi University in the field across the country.
In his presidential address, Professor Dr Iqrar Ahmad Khan, Vice Chancellor University of Agriculture said that the discipline began with early human efforts to identify edible, medicinal and poisonous plants, making it one of the oldest sciences.
He said today botanists study over 550,000 species of living organisms and it is the mother of all agricultural sciences. He said that the population of the country at the time of inception was 33 million but the number has risen to 180 million.
He said the agri land had also reduced manifold because of industrialisation and urbanisation. It is a challenge for the agri scientists to provide food for the ever-increasing population. He said that botany played a vital role in increasing the per-acre production of crops. Now it is duty of the botanists to put their full efforts in boosting up agri productivity by conducting quality researches, he added.
Talking about education, Professor Dr Iqrar said that in our system, the people were running for getting only good grades instead of quality education. This trend should be curtailed for the development of country in particular. Dean Faculty of Sciences Professor Dr Muhammad Ashraf stressed the need to adopt model of education of China, having a university town where various universities are operating in competitive environment.
He said that Malaysia, Turkey and China had made tremendous progress in every field because of education and hardworking. Two universes of Malaysia are standing among 400 top universities of the world. While one university of Iran and two universities of Saudi Arabia are also listed among top 200 universities. Professor Dr Ejaz Rasul from Lums, talking about the importance of botany, said there are plants that generate oxygen, food, fibers, fuel and medicine that allows humans and other life forms to exist. He said that it is botanists who work on how to improve different strains of crop varieties, how to a specific crop would grow in a particular climate and soil conditions and increase the productivity. He said: "the sugarcane and other plants have recently been put to use as sources of biofuels, which are important alternatives to fossil fuels". Department of Botany Chairman Professor Dr Abdul Wahid said that the department had produced 37Ph.D, 60 M Phil and 80 M.Sc so far. He said objective of the seminar is to aware the audience about the growing issue as well as basis of the discipline. He said that students of agricultural sciences were generally lacking the basic knowledge of basic botany of plants on which they conduct experiments.
Professor Rehana Asghar from Mirpur University of Science and Technology (MUST), Dr Yusuf Zafar from PAEC, Professor Dr Fauzia from COMSATS and other notables also spoke on the occasion.