Pusa farm institute headless since August

The Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), the cradle of Green Revolution in the country, is without a full-time head for over seven months now. The last director of IARI (better known as Pusa institute) H S Gupta retired on August 7.

The Agricultural Scientists Recruitment Board (ASRB) had, prior to Gupta’s leaving, advertised for the position on June 14. But the interviews took place only on February 11 after being scheduled and cancelled thrice.

“It’s over a month since the interviews were conducted, yet there’s no sign of anyone getting appointed. This is unprecedented”, said a senior IARI scientist.

Since Gupta’s retirement, IARI has had two acting directors — K Vijayaraghavan (former joint director of extension, who superannuated on September 30) and Ravinder Kaur (project director of the institute’s Water Technology Centre, holding charge from October 1).

“I am concerned as IARI is too important an institution. It requires dynamic leadership and I hope they choose the right person soon. The ASRB is meant to be an autonomous body for selection of scientists at all Indian Council of Agricultural Research institutes,” eminent agricultural scientist M S Swaminathan said.

Swaminathan was IARI’s director from 1966 to 1972, when the popular Kalyan Sona and Sonalika wheat varieties, selected from semi-dwarf lines developed by legendary breeder Norman Borlaug, launched India’s Green Revolution.

“We need climate-smart agriculture today to improve our farmers’ coping capacity against the vagaries of nature. The PM, too, has talked of More Crop, Per Drop. But this cannot happen without adequate scientific support, which is where IARI has a huge role in terms of research as well as contributing high-level human resources through its post-graduate school”, he added.

ICAR director-general S Ayyappan said the IARI director’s selection “is a regular process of recruitment through ASRB”. He, however, refused to comment on the unusual delay in appointment and stated, “it will happen soon”.

Among those interviewed for the post were K V Prabhu, K C Bansal and N K Singh.

Prabhu, currently IARI’s joint director of research, is chief breeder of HD-2967 (a high-yielding wheat grown in a record-breaking 8 million hectares area this year) and also the recently released HD-3086 wheat variety.]

Bansal heads National Bureau of Plant Genetic Resources, the world’s third largest gene bank with nearly 400,000 germplasm accessions of over 3,000 crops.

Singh, national professor at ICAR’s National Research Centre on Plant Biotechnology (NRCPB), is well-known for his work on sequencing the pigeon-pea genome in 2011—the first-ever such effort for any legume crop.

Others who were interviewed were former NRCPB director P Ananda Kumar, Rajendra Central Agricultural University (Bihar) V-C R K Mittal and ICAR assistant director-general M B Chetti.

Source:: Indian Express