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PUNE, April 29: Venturing out of their purely academic fields', the agriculture Universities in the State will now get an opportunity to...

PUNE, April 29: Venturing out of their purely academic fields8217;, the agriculture Universities in the State will now get an opportunity to trytheir hands out at the corporatisation.

The State Government has decided to rope in all the four agriculture universities in the State in what is being described as the first ever attempt to transform the varsities into research and development institutions.

The universities will join the Maharashtra State Seed Corporation MSSC for a mission to attain self-reliance in the production of seeds. They have been assigned the task of providing the technology back-bone for the Seed production programme8217; scheduled to be launched in June this year.

Over 20,000 farmers in the State will be involved in the programme for production of seeds for MSSC. Accordingly, the farmers from all agro-climatic zones in the State will be involved in the project to be funded by the MSSC. Besides, the Corporation will also give buy-back guarantee to the farmers with a whopping profit margin of about 20 per cent on the sale of seeds.

A total grant of Rs 200 lakh, 50 lakh to each university has been cleared by the State government for setting up of special facilities in research and development of seed production technology.

8220;Maharashtra has a vast agriculture potential. And so far the agriculture universities were involved in academic and research work. But now we want the varsities to make use of their expertise in allied areas of agriculture research such as seed production, for the benefit of the State and to their own profits,8221; Harshvardhan Patil, Minister for State 8211; Agriculture , Water and Soil Conservation told The Indian Express.

Thus, the programme will also mark the entry of agriculture varsities in the commercial applications sector of developed technology, said Patil. 8220;The varsities will be given a free hand to utilise the fund as per their areas of specialisation in seed production and also the technology thus developed will be bought from them with all profits channelised back to them for further extension of their research activities,8221; he added. Maharashtra has an annual seed requirement of 15 lakh quintals. Out of these 50 per cent demand is met by the MSSC while the rest has to be purchased from the nearby States in the national market.