The courses in the Odisha University of Agriculture and Technology (OUAT) will be made more industry specific and growth oriented as per changing climatic conditions and market requirements. This was decided in a high level meeting held under chairmanship of Chief Secretary Aditya Prasad Padhi here on Monday. Agriculture and Farmers Empowerment Secretary Sourav Garg outlined the issues and the Vice-Chancellor OUAT Prof Surendra Nath
Pasupalak placed the OUAT’s operational pan for coming three years for discussion.
The Chief Secretary advised the university to make its course more growth oriented keeping in view the changing climatic conditions. The university was also advised to make its course more industry specific so as to make the students ‘work-ready’ when they pass out of the campus.
Further, Chief Secretary Padhi advised the university to make the Krushi Vigyan Kendras ( KVKs) more vibrant and farmer -need oriented. They should operate like the connecting point between the laboratory and the field.
The innovative research projects undertaken in KVKs be made outcome oriented leading to actual field level benefit for the sustainable agriculture.
Replying to a media query after the meeting, Principal Secretary Garg that the meeting deliberated on quality enhancement in research,
training, making the OUAT course more industry specific and adding new frontiers like climate change and environment, landscape architecture, conservation, wild life management, man-animal conflict management and IT applications in agriculture. The details will be worked out soon and steps would be expedited to implement those.
Available data show that presently, the OUAT’s extension activities are mostly carried forward through the 33 KVKs operating in different parts of Odisha. Each district has at least one KVK. Apart from that there are additional KVKs in the districts like Mayurbhanj, Sundargarh and Ganjam. Around six scientists in each KVK lead the research and extension works. The OUAT is having its campuses at Bhubaneswar, Chipilima, Bhwanipatana and Rangeilunda. There are 10 polytechnic institutions of OUAT in different places. The proposal for having agro-business based polytechnic trades was discussed in the meeting.
The meeting also decided that the OUAT students would have real time practice with the farmers at GP and village level as a part of their course. The Chief Secretary directed to scale up the quality of teaching and learning for training more entrepreneurs than that of jobseekers.
