NDRI Confers “Dr. D. Sundaresan Oration Award” to Secretary, DARE & DG, ICAR

The National Dairy Research Institute conferred the “Dr. D. Sundaresan Oration Award” on Dr. S. Ayyappan, Secretary, DARE and DG, ICAR, New Delhi here today. The function was presided over by Dr. A.K. Srivastava, Director and Vice Chancellor, NDRI, Karnal. Dr. G.R. Patil, Joint Director (Academic) welcomed Dr. Ayyappan and other guests present on this occasion. Dr. Srivastava read out the citation of Dr. S. Ayyappan.

While speaking on the theme of ‘Youth for Transforming Indian Agriculture’, Dr Ayyappan said that role of youth in agriculture is vital and their capacities would matter a lot for enhancing agricultural productivity to meet the objective of nutritional security for the growing human population as envisaged under National Food Security Act 2013. In this regard, the human resource development, particularly young professionals must ensure: (a) effective communication of science in agriculture, (b) integration of social media in agriculture, (c) promotion of agriculture as a career path, and (d) a networking to influence national agenda.

The ‘Young Professionals’ Platform for Agricultural Research for Development (YPARD)’ has been working since 2013 to help promote and stimulate youth participation in agriculture. This platform provides information to youth on opportunities in agricultural development, sharing success stories of young role models in agriculture and advocating for greater youth engagement and representation, he said.

Poverty and unemployment has been leading to the brain drain and migration of youth nationally from rural areas to urban and nationally to the abroad. Investing in young people on improved access to training, capacity development and facilitating access to appropriate technology with broader platform is a key to enhancing agricultural productivity and food security, boosting rural economies, and reducing rural-to-urban migration. Nowadays, ICTs has been a key platform for the knowledge sharing and networking regarding development of agriculture globally.

Dr. D. Sundaresan Oration Award has been instituted in memory of Dr. D. Sundaresan, Former Director NDRI, who is always remembered for forging excellence in research & development endeavours of this institute.

Dr Ayyappan inaugurated the state of the art facility of “Climate Resilient Livestock Research Centre”, one of its kinds in the country. He also inaugurated the facilities at ‘Livestock Research Centre’ and office of ‘National Academy of Dairy Sciences (India)’, besides visiting different labs of Microbiology including the under construction National Referral Lab for milk quality and safety.

On this occasion, the logo and website of 12th Agricultural Science Congress (Livelihood Security for Small Holder Farmers) to be held at NDRI, Karnal from 3 to 6 February, 2015 was released by Dr Ayyappan. Dr. K.M.L. Patahk, DDG (Animal science) and Dr. A.K. Sikka, DDG (NRM) also visited the newly developed facilities.

(Source: NDRI, Karnal)