A team of experts from International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and CIMMYT comprising of Dr Noel Magor, head, Training Centre, Dr David Shires, consultant from IRRI, the Philippines, and Dr Petr Kosina, coordinator, Knowledge Sharing and Capacity Building, CIMMYT, visited Punjab Agricultural University, on Tuesday.They held discussions with the PAU Vice-Chancellor, Dr Manjit Singh Kang, Director, Extension Education, Dr N.S. Malhi, Director of Research, Dr P.S. Minhas and PAU scientists working on wheat and rice.Welcoming the team, Dr Manjit Singh Kang, Vice-Chancellor, provided an overview of the technology generation and its dissemination programmes at PAU. He said that every teacher of PAU has to undertake research, teaching and extension as part of their duties. Dr N.S. Malhi, Director of Extension Education, talked about the extension education activities of PAU involving kisan melas, field days, contact programmes, demonstrations, etc. that is accomplished with the participation of Krishi Vigyan Kendras, FASS and regional stations for the benefit of farmers.The visiting team stressed that establishment of rice/cereal knowledge bank was part of their new project on “Cereal systems initiative for South Asia (CSISA),” adding that PAU was likely to be a partner. They said that this knowledge bank concept was well exemplified in Thailand and Bangladesh, adding that creation of India-wide knowledge bank would be useful to bridge the research extension gap. The team members appreciated the research-extension-farmers linkage operating at PAU. They said that through knowledge-sharing and capacity-building programmes, knowledge suitable for extension to the farmer clientele could be generated. Information Technology (IT) and e-communication have been recognised as potentially powerful tool for organising knowledge in a region, they said. The inter-disciplinary team of scientists working on wheat and rice attended to specific queries by the visiting experts. Dr Kang presented the visiting scientists with sets of PAU publications on the occasion.
