Western Sydney University officials visit UHF Nauni; discuss areas of collaboration

Nauni (Himachal Pradesh), November 18, 2019: Continuing its efforts towards enhancing its international cooperation, the management of Dr YS Parmar University of Horticulture and Forestry (UHF), Nauni met the representatives of Western Sydney University (WSU), Australia and Wellant College, Netherlands. Dr Robert Spooner Hart, Associate Professor in Allied Entomology and Evolutionary Ecologist Dr Simon Tierney, both representatives of WSU held talks with Dr Parvinder Kaushal, Vice-Chancellor, Dr JN Sharma, Director Research, Dr ML Bhardwaj, Dean Horticulture and other senior officials of the university regarding the signing of MoU. The two universities signed a Letter of Intent (LoI) in December last year for joint collaborative research, exchange programmes and the exchange of information in horticultural and forestry sciences. The two universities will work towards the exchange of academic staff for teaching and research activities and exchange of PhD students to undertake study or participate in research programmes. As part of the collaboration, both universities want to undertake work on honeybees and bumblebees as pollinators of fruit crops particularly in apple and cherry. The scientists are currently visiting India as part of the Indo Australian Collaboration project on crop pollination. The team also visited the entomology department including the university apiary. Speaking during the meeting, Dr Spooner said that the two institutions could undertake comparative studies in similar working areas and look towards joint publications in high impact international journals. Other areas of possible collaboration were also discussed during the meeting. Dr Kaushal thanked the delegation for visiting the university. He said that the university would look to expedite the MoU signing so that the students and faculty get the maximum benefit from the collaboration. In a separate event, Ir. G. (Gerrit) van Dieren, International Officer in Wellant College, interacted with students of the Horticulture College and shared his experience in value addition of horticultural produce at a commercial level. He apprised students about various varieties of fruits, vegetables and flowers available in the international market and how they were being produced in other parts of the world. He focused on the role of logistics and marketing to retain the quality of the final produce in the international markets and talked about the need to develop adequate storage facilities in India. Dieren was the view that horticulture has become a key driver for economic development in many countries but one of the constraints is the availability of planting material, poor yields and low productivity, wider year to year fluctuations and poor quality of produce. Dieren visited the university’s experimental fields and met the university Vice-Chancellor and other senior functionaries to discuss the areas where the two institutions could work together.