Thiruvananthapuram: Giving a big push for the digital transformation of agriculture, the ICAR-Central Tuber Crops Research Institute (CTCRI) and Digital University Kerala (DUK), the country's first digital university, will collaborate on agri-tech research by setting up a centre of excellence in agriculture technologies.
Both institutions will work together to leverage their respective expertise to develop cutting-edge technologies to address the value-chain problems in the agriculture sector across the country. Other areas of collaboration include joint research and development projects as well as to develop of sustainable entrepreneurship along with joint students' research programmes, a DUK release said here on Saturday.
"We believe this unique relationship between a digital technology institution and a leading agriculture research organisation will help develop several innovative products to enhance digital enablement and transformation of agriculture," said Dr Saji Gopinath, Vice Chancellor, Digital University Kerala. He said the research collaboration between Digital University Kerala and CTCRI, a leading ICAR research organisation in the country, is expected to combine synergies of both institutions to carry out interdisciplinary research in digital agriculture and allied areas.
"The collaboration involves recognising CTCRI as a recognised research centre for the university, having joint PhD students and to create joint research projects amongst scientist and faculty members," he added. Dr G Byju, Director, CTCRI said the institute is looking forward to having very effective collaboration in PhD programmes as well as international and national research projects to develop digital tools for sustainable natural resources management, disaster risk reduction, genomics as well as phenomic studies.
"Tuber crops such as cassava, sweet potato, yams, elephant foot yam, taro among others are climate resilient crops which have very great future and there are many researchable issues that will be addressed in collaboration with DUK," he said. As part of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), Digital University Kerala will establish a recognised research centre of DUK at CTCRI and also various capacity-building programmes in digital technologies for the manpower working in the agriculture sector. (PTI)
