Updated on: Sunday, March 06, 2011
India is facing almost 50% shortage of agricultural scientists at the entry level. This condition does not augur well for an agrarian country.
"We are facing a shortage of agricultural scientists at the entry level by almost 50% and at the high level by around 20%" Agricultural Scientist Recruitment Board(ASRB) Chairman C D Mayee addressed at a function in Meerat.
He also told, "ASRB is conducting Agricultural Research Services(ARS) recruitment exam for 290 vacancies both at the entry and high level. But we would not be able to fill more than 130-140 vacancies.
There are large-scale vacancies to fall in the quality of agri education at the university level. The lack of quality education is resulting in non-availability of good students.
So, the universities should concentrate on teaching apart from research work, so as to prepare good scientists for the future.
We need good teachers in agriculture. It is a priority as the quality is going down. While universities from Tamil Nadu and Dharwad agri-university were doing a commendable job, there were almost no candidates from Punjab agricultural university and from Pantnagar university".