The University of Agriculture will name its two newly constructed hostels set up at Postgraduate Agricultural Research Station, UAF, on the names of Turkish leader Tayyip Erdogan, Prime Minister and Abdullah Gul, President of Turkey, in order to strengthen bilateral ties, brotherhood and historic relationship.
This was stated by University of Agriculture Vice Chancellor, Professor Dr Iqrar Ahmed Khan while giving a briefing to Turkish delegation at the syndicate room of the varsity. The delegation was headed by Dr Mahmud Civik, Co-ordinator Agricultural and Livestock Project, Turkish International Co-operation and Development Agency (Tika). Other members of the delegation were Elif Turkislam Ojlu and Mahmud Saeed.
The delegation is on the visit to Pakistan to explore the avenues of mutual co-operation in a bid to strengthen agricultural sector by initiating research and development projects. The vice chancellor said that the production of the major crops had gone up many times due to per acre increase in production and efforts made on the part of agriculture scientists. It can be gauged from the figure that the wheat production has boosted up to seven times, rice production goes up to 13 times, cotton 12 times, sugarcane eight times, potato 116 times, citrus 191 times and guava 220 times since 1947.
Talking about agriculture land, he said agricultural land has reduced to 0.13 ha per capita while it was 0.42 ha per capita in 1961. And now it is the challenge for the agricultural scientists to expedite the pace of work to increase the feed the growing population.
Talking about the growth of the university, he said UAF is standing among the top universities of the country with 2,070 publications while Karachi University is at the top with 8,974 and Quaid-e-Azam University at 2,909. He said that as many as many as around 13,000 students are studying at the campus while the number was only 900 in 1961 when the university was elevated to the status of university.