The University of Agriculture Faisalabad sub-campus in Toba Tek Singh will be made full-fledged University, announced UAF Vice-Chancellor Professor Dr Iqrar Ahmad Khan. He was addressing Technology Transfer Workshop at UAF sub-campus situated in Toba Tek Singh on Sunday. The workshop was the part of Kissan Festival being marked here.
The festival comprised Agriculture Exhibition, Kabaddi Match, Fancy Bird Show and the workshop. Former Livestock Minister Mumtaiz Minais and the Pakistan Poultry Association President Dr Arshad Hanif were guests of honour on the occasion.
He suggested that at least 20 sub-campuses of UAF should be set up in Punjab province in a bid to providing the state-of-the-art agricultural education to the rural persons at their doorstep. He said although Indian Punjab was one-third of the Pakistani Punjab even then there were seven sub-campuses of Ludhiana Agriculture University.
He lauded the announcement of Punjab Chief Minister Mian Shahbaz Sharif for granting 300 scholarships to study abroad for the faculty and students of UAF. He assured the due share of the scholarships to be given to the Toba Tek Singh sub-campus. He said that completion of the construction of new building of the campus needed Rs 700 million and as soon as Prime Minster approves the said amount, the construction would be started. He thanked USAID for providing Rs 20 million for initial construction of the Toba project. He urged the agro- scientists to fully involve themselves in outreach programmes so that the researches could be produced into goods and services. He said that money being spent on the scientists is public money. Now, it is the time to back the money to the public in the shape of outreach programme and sharing their skills and expertise in this regard. He said citrus production has reduced manifold in the last two decades as in 1992, Pakistan was standing at number 9th in the production across the globe but now we are ranked at number 20th in the citrus producing county. He said Dr Iqrar Ahmad Khan urged the farmers to give attention to produce seedless citrus (Kinno) as the international market demanding only this type of Kinno.