FAISALABAD: Sindh Agriculture Secretary Abdul Raheem Soomro has urged agriculture scientists to come up with viable solutions and develop a strong liaison with government, management and farming community to uplift the agriculture sector and address the issues of food security.

He called on UAF Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Asif Tanveer and met the deans and directors at meeting room. He said that the agriculture sector was in the grip of the different challenges including low productivity, water issues, and lack of mechanization, seed issues and others. He said that the tangible research works being carried out in our universities must be translated into the goods and service.

He said that agriculture sector was contributing 19 percent to the Gross Domestic Product. He said that a strong liaison among all agriculture and research institutions of the country should be developed in order to combat agricultural issues. He said that we have to boost up the per acre productivity in the situation where population was increasing and agriculture land was decreasing.

He also lauded the efforts of the UAF for the combating the agricultural issues and giving out-of-the-box solution

UAF Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Asif Tanveer said that climate changes, post-harvest losses and a lack of mechanization were hurdles to get benefit from our potential. He said that the agricultural fertile land was being converted into residential colonies that trend must be curtailed. He said that UAF was taking all possible measures to enhance the productivity and strengthen the agriculture sector which is a backbone of our economy. He added that the UAF being mother of all agricultural institutions in the country had given births to diffident Universities including University of Veterinary Sciences Lahore; PMAS Arid Agriculture University Rawalpindi and Ghazi University. He said that the university was used to conduct the trainings of the different provinces farming community.

Director Research Dr Zahir Ahmad Zahir said that the University was running the research projects worth more than Rs 2 billion that was one of the largest research port folios in the century.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2021