Hindu, India
06-16-08
United States-India Agriculture Initiative Makes Significant Progress
(AKI) has made significant progress in forging lasting private sector and
university relationships between the two countries, American Agriculture
Secretary Mike Johanns has said.
In his remarks after fifth board meeting of AKI Friday, he expressed confidence
that the relationship would flourish in the future.
Among the projects to be undertaken this year is one which aims at developing
new rice varieties that tolerate drought and salt through partnership between a
US biotechnology company and Indian private and public sector companies.
Besides, Indian scientists will be trained in the use of biotechnology so that they
can solve agriculture problems and improve crops.
University staff from Iowa State University will set up distance learning
classrooms at three Indian universities in August 2007.
Fifteen students from both countries will be recruited to participate in US-India
"sandwich" degree programme in international water management, beginning
summer 2007 Research projects will also be established at Indian universities
on using waste water for irrigation and harvesting water for recharging
groundwater.
The US undergraduate students will to travel to India to work with Indian
students on design projects Workshop to discuss measurement.
The funding will be provided for Indian participants in Norman E Borlaug
International Agricultural Science and Technology Fellows Programme to study
best agricultural and food processing practices and biotechnology.
Three new USAID Higher Education Partnerships between US Land Grant
universities and Indian state agricultural universities will be established.
A workshop on sanitary and phytosanitary capacity building, as well as sciencebased risk analysis and modeling will be held in India this year and a trade.
President George Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has announced
the formation of AKI in July 2005 to renew collaboration between the United
States and India.
A work plan, formulated in February 2006, defined four focus areas: university
capacity building, food processing and marketing, biotechnology and water
management.