Agri courses a big draw

Hyderabad: An increasing interest from youngsters to pursue a career in agriculture and allied fields has prompted the State’s premier agricultural university to increase the number of seats for agri courses, hire more teaching staff and help the government establish more agriculture colleges in the State. The mounting appeal of the farmer and agriculture has […]

Hyderabad: An increasing interest from youngsters to pursue a career in agriculture and allied fields has prompted the State’s premier agricultural university to increase the number of seats for agri courses, hire more teaching staff and help the government establish more agriculture colleges in the State.

The mounting appeal of the farmer and agriculture has seen the Professor Jayashankar Telangana State Agricultural University (PJTSAU) doubling the number of seats in BSc Agriculture to 120 from earlier 60 seats in each of its six agriculture colleges in the State. It has also doubled seats from 120 to 240 in its College of Agriculture, Rajendranagar. With this enhancement, a total of 960 seats in BSc Agriculture alone will be up for grabs for the academic year 2022-23 through admission counselling.

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With several students moving to other States to pursue BSc Agriculture, the varsity had enhanced seats from 564 in 2015-16 to 988 in 2021-22 for all undergraduate courses. Overall, the university will now be offering over 1,500 seats in undergraduate, postgraduate and PhD programmes in 2022-23.

“As per directions from Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao, the number of colleges was earlier increased from 5 to 8 and now seats have been tripled for the benefit of students in the State,” PJTSAU Vice-Chancellor Prof V Praveen Rao told ‘Telangana Today‘.

With an increase in seats, officials are looking to recruit 200 teaching staff and a proposal has been sent to the State government. Earlier, 180 teaching staff were recruited. As there is a demand for agriculture courses, the State government is also planning to start one new agriculture college in the Adilabad district. The government is also exploring the option to establish Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK) in all districts and the university is coordinating with the Indian Council of Agricultural Research on the same. Presently, there are eight KVKs in the State.

On the research front, the university is developing new varieties in rice, maize, millets, groundnut, sesame, red gram, green gram and black gram which are high yielding besides pest and disease resistant.

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