Indira Gandhi Agriculture University (IGAU), Raipur is now among the top ten agriculture varsities in the country, officials said here on Thursday.
In the 2018-19 ranking released by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), IGAU bagged the tenth place. Earlier, in 2016-17 IGAU was at 17th place while in 2017-18 it had reached the 12th place.
ICAR ranks the agriculture universities on the basis of works done by a university in the field of agriculture education, research and its expansion.
Notably, currently there are 72 agriculture universities across India.
In 2000 IGAU had only four colleges with 300 seats. Today there are 40 government and private collages affiliated to the university with 2200 seats available for students. In the coming session new agriculture collages will be started in Mahasamund, Gariaband, Kurud, Korba, Jashpur, Chhuikhadan, Saja and Marra (Patan), officials said.
As per IGAU officials, in 2003 the university had only 100, post graduate and PhD seats which has been increased to 591 now. IGAU had signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with 58 national research institutes to facilitate research scholars.
The students doing research in these institutions are provided scholarship of Rs 5,000 and Rs 10,000. Chhattisgarh is the first state to offer this kind of scholarship.
Currently about 400 students from 20 different states are perusing different courses in the university.
