BK News
Srinagar, Sept 19: Association of Agrometeorlogists Anand (AAM) has opened its Kashmir-chapter at Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology, Kashmir.
The move is aimed to boost the conduct of climate-smart agricultural research and capacity building of farmers that will help them to change from conventional to real-time weather-based agricultural practices.
The Kashmir-chapter of AAM was inaugurated by the association’s national president, Prof Vyas Panday during a virtual conference held to commemorate the World Ozone Day by SKUAST-K’s Faculty of Agriculture in collaboration with World Bank-ICAR funded National Agricultural Higher Education Project (NAHEP) in presence of Prof Mushtaq Ahmad, Director Extension SKUAST-K, Dr Nazir A Ganai, Director Planning & PI NAHEP, Dr LS Rathore, former DG Indian Meteorological Department, Prof AH Hakeem, Dean, Faculty of Agriculture, Dr BA Khanday and a number of scientists.
While emphasizing the importance of World Ozone Day, Prof Panday stated that agrometeorologists have an important role to play in environmental protection and climate-smart agriculture. He said that since its inception, the Association of Agrometeorologists has been expanding in all the directions with its life members exceeding 1700.
The Association has been organizing the national and international seminars on different themes of current interest and publishes Journal of Agrometeorology (ISSN 0972-1665) regularly since 1999, which is being indexed in most of the scientific indexing services and now it has an impact factor of 0.644 and NAAS score of 6.64 for year 2020.
Dr LS Rathore, former Director General IMD said the launch of AAM Kashmir chapter will carry out research and will serve the farmers in a much better way.
The Association operates its activities from its HQ office at Department of Agricultural Meteorology, Anand Agricultural University Anand, Gujarat, India with its 17 sub-branch offices called chapters functioning at Hisar, Ludhiana, Pune, Hyderabad, Mohanpur, Pantnagar, Coimbatore, New Delhi, Jammu, Faizabad, Raipur, Thrissur, Parbhani, Bihar, Bhopal, Meerut and now in Kashmir.
The Kashmir-chapter office bearers include Dr BA Khanday as chairperson, Dr Raihana Habib Kanth as secretary and Dr Lal Singh as treasurer.
During the conference, an online quiz and one-minute video competition coordinated by Prof Raihana Habib Kanth, Dr Naveed Bhat and Salim was also conducted in which 300 students from all over the country participated.
