The University of Agriculture Faisalabad senate meeting on Monday approved non-development statement of accounts worth Rs 3.28 billion for year 2015-16.

The University of Agriculture Faisalabad senate meeting on Monday approved non-development statement of accounts worth Rs 3.28 billion for year 2015-16. The 44th meeting was chaired by UAF Vice Chancellor Dr Iqrar Ahmad Khan while Registrar Muhammad Hussian presented the agenda and Treasurer Umar Saeed presented statement of accounts. Addressing on the occasion, the Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Iqrar A Khan said that the university had kicked off 48 new degrees program in the last couple of years keeping the challenges in view. He added that students’ enrolment at the campus had crossed 25,000 students which was 16,000 in 2013. He said that capturing rural and under privileged students by design in its admission system, the UAF financial assistance program had crossed to Rs 700 million. He said that academia- industry linkages and knowledge based economy were pivotal to compete with the rest of world. “ Our competitive research portfolio has crossed Rs 2.5 billion, which is the largest among the all the varsities in the country, he claimed. Talking about agriculture research , Dr Iqrar Ahmad Khan said that Pakistan is spending 0.1 percent of its GDP on agriculture research while India utilize 4 times more than us. He urged the government to invest on agricultural researched that will help address the daunting issues of low productivity, rural development, food insecurity and others. He said that farmers are applying five irrigations for wheat crop whereas we recommend to apply three irrigation for wheat with raising concerns water scarcity. He said the water, saved from reducing the irrigation from five to three times across the country, would be equal to Tarbella and Mangella storage. He added that one of the challenges which Pakistani people is facing in health “malnutrition” reached at panic stage . He said that 40 percent of total population is being faced malnutrition today. He further added that we will have to create awareness among people about health nutrition. He also called for the food diversification to cope with the challenges. Throwing light on challenges in agriculture, he said that post harvest losses are responsible for 40 percent for which we have to adopt the latest techniques, He said that agriculture crops, vegetables and foods worth billions of rupees could be saved by adopting modern handling , storage, processing, transportation, and value addition to minimize post harvest losses.