Governor of Uttarakhand, Dr K K Paul, has emphasised on the need to promote hill agriculture to address issues like migration of people from hill areas.The matter of concern is that the hill agriculture being non-productive, the people from the hill areas are migrating to plains. So the Pantnagar university should look in to the problems of hill agriculture to make it productive and stop migration, he maintained, while addressing the faculty members and heads of departments of the G B Pant University of Agriculture and Technology (GBPUAT) in Pantnagar on Thursday.
The Governor further said that the Pantnagar University has played significant role in saving the country from hunger and bringing green revolution. Now, this university needs to give more emphasis on hill agriculture too and undertake new research programmes for making it productive. He also dwelt upon excessive use of fertilizer and water and suggested to evolve technologies for more production with minimum use of fertilizer and water.
The Chancellor also drew the attention of the scientists towards ill effects of the use of fertilizer. He also advised the officials concerned of the university to use information technology for improvement and extension in agriculture.
Dr Mangala Rai, vice-chancellor of Pantnagar University, while welcoming the Chancellor said that the agriculturescenario has changed completely and old technologies are now not sufficient to solve present- day problems. He emphasised on use of censor-based technologies in agriculture, besides other modern technologies, in agriculture.
Earlier, the Governor started his visit from Gandhi Bhawan hostel, the oldest hostel of the university, where he inaugurated renovation programme to be undertaken in all 22 hostels of the university with a cost of Rs 10 crore.He also inaugurated tree plantation programme of all the hostels at Gandhi Bhawan hostel by planting a litchi plant.The Chancellor also inaugurated the new building of Information Technology in College of Technology.