Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu calls for fund boost to agriculture research

HYDERABAD: Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu has stressed the need for further investment in agricultural research and extension, to achieve sustainable gains in agricultural productivity.

He said that expenditure on research and development in India was less than one per cent of the contribution of agriculture in the Gross Development Product (GDP), and less than what other developing and developed nations were spending on that front.

Addressing the fourth graduation ceremony of PGDM (ABM), ICAR- National Academy of Agricultural Research Management (NAARM) in Hyderabad on Saturday, he felt that investment in genomics, molecular breeding and nanotechnology was the way forward.

Terming the role of extension workers, researchers, agricultural scientists and agro-business professionals as 'indispensable'; he felt that development of new technologies for sustainable production need to be taken to farmers with the slogan 'lab to land'.

He spoke about the importance of bringing synergy between agriculture and modern technologies like drones, artificial intelligence and so on, by developing scalable and customized products to the farms, and hoped mobile-based extension services would be delivered to farmers far away from research stations.