Rice centre at PAU is the best says ICAR

AHMEDABAD: The rice improvement work, undertaken in the Rice section of the Department of Plant Breeding and Genetics (DPBG) of the Punjab Agricultural University ( PAU), has been adjudged as the best, at the national level, by Indian Council of Agricultural Research ( ICAR).

The PAU centre has been conferred Certificate of Excellence and Best All India Coordinated Rice Improvement Project Centre Award for 2011-12.Out of forty seven different centres, funded by the ICAR for rice improvement work in the country, the work of PAU was adjudged overall best and the award was bestowed upon the team of PAU scientists during 47 ^thAnnual Rice Research Group Meetings, held at Directorate of Rice Research, Hyderabad.

Dr Swapan Kumar Datta, Deputy Director General (Crop Science), ICAR, New Delhi and V. Nagi Reddy, Vice-Chancellor, Acharya N. G. Ranga Agricultural University (ANGRAU), Hyderabad , presented the award to the team of PAU Rice Section scientists including Dr G.S. Mangat, Dr Gulshan Mahajan, Dr P.S. Sarao, Dr J.S. Lore and Dr Rupinder Kaur.

Dr Baldev Singh Dhillon, Vice-Chancellor, PAU, congratulated the rice improvement team, lead by Dr Kuldeep Singh, for this distinction and exhorted them to continue with their untiring efforts of taking the premiere institution of PAU to greater heights in future also.

Lauding and congratulating the scientists for their commendable work, Dr Allah Rang, Head, DPBG, said that the PAU, since its inception, has released 31 rice varieties which include 21 non-basmati and 10 basmati/aromatic rice varieties. Highlighting that the PAU has the strongest bacterial leaf blight (BLB) resistance breeding programme in the country, Dr Rang divulged that the seeds of BLB resistant varieties, developed by the university, are in great demand among the neighboring states of Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir.