Paradoxical Agriculture strategy for high yield discussed

LAHORE:University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences (UVAS) Lahore arranged an awareness seminar on “Paradoxical Agriculture” here Wednesday at City Campus, Lahore. The objective of the seminar was to implement the strategy of paradoxical agriculture for high yield fodder/crops production, so that productivity of the dairy animals can be increased with the ultimate goal of food security in Pakistan.

UVAS Vice-Chancellor Prof Dr Masood Rabbani chaired inaugural session of the seminar while a large number of UVAS faculty members from all campuses, staff and postgraduate students attended the event. Muhammad Asif Sharif, who is specialised in marketing, project development in agriculture, production process mechanisation, forward engineering in energy responsible citizenship, delivered a detailed lecture and shared his ideas for new technology of change in existing production system for more production with minimum input cost.

He introduced most of agriculture machinery in use, developed precision machinery for land levelling raised-bed cropping, seeding, compost/fertilizer dressing, transplanting, weeding and soil aerating.

He said affordable crop production could reduce the input cost of livestock and poultry production as approximately 70 percent of the cost incurred on provision of balanced feed. He also discussed that how the paradoxical agriculture interventions could be of help for improved and affordable fodder production.

He spoke about various aspects related to paradoxical agriculture science of eco system, challenges, breed improvement, natural process of vegetation, plowing, seed requires moisture and warmth, water utilisation, irrigation, transpiration, humidity in air, temperature, air velocity, soil moisture management, flood & furrow irrigation, abundance of minerals in soil etc. Prof Dr Masood Rabbani said UVAS always arranged such type of informative seminars for the awareness of farmers especially for their guidance that how farming community enhance their fodder production and also profitability of poor farming community as well.

Applied Research Manager UVAS Dairy Beef Project Hafeezullah gave a presentation on village based seed enterprise and project interventions for optimisation of feed resources through on-farm agronomy research, benefit of quality fodder seed, replicate fodder research trail by involving private sector, Rhodes grass research trail through PPP mode, extension material by project, fodder combination plan for smallholders farmers, strategies to revitalise the fodder production and extension services, etc. At the end of the seminar, Prof Rabbani along with Prof Dr Aneela Zameer Durrani, Prof Dr Kamran Ashraf presented a souvenir to Muhammad Asif Sharif. Registrar Sajjad Haider presented vote of thanks.

Meanwhile, Office of Research, Innovation and Commercialisation (ORIC) of the University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences, Lahore organised a concluding ceremony of two-day workshop on “Patent Drafting” for faculty members and researchers here Wednesday in Veterinary Academy. In this workshop, various aspects of patent drafting, filing techniques and intellectual property rights were discussed. Vice-Chancellor Prof Dr Masood Rabbani chaired the concluding session of the workshop and distributed certificates among participants.

Earlier, Prof Dr Kamran Ashraf chaired the inaugural session.