Horticultural ties between the US and Pakistan have been strengthened through a collaborative project linking the University of California’s Davis campus (UC Davis) and aleading agricultural institution in the Asian nation.
The project will see the development of the US-Pakistan Centre for Advanced Studies in Agriculture and Food Security, which is being funded by the US Agency for International Development. The centre will make it possible for faculty members and graduate students from both UC Davis and Pakistan’s University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, to complete study and research projects at each other’s campuses.
“UC Davis has been partnering with colleagues in Pakistan since 2009, sharing expertise in agriculture from crop production to post-harvest handling,” said James Hill of UC Davis’ college of agricultural and environmental sciences. “Establishment of this new centre will allow us to build on those efforts, with a renewed emphasis on an exchange of faculty and graduate students.”
Hill said the first year of funding will see the centre plan several workshops to assist the University of Agriculture with technology transfer and entrepreneurship to strengthen its connections to the private sector. UC Davis also will initiate programmes in both research and curriculum development.
Hill noted that two other Pakistan-focused projects are already underway through UC Davis’ international programmes office, primarily in the area of horticultural cropping.
