DAVIS, CA - UC Davis has announced the launch of a new, $17 million collaborative project that will link the university with Pakistan’s leading agricultural university.
The project, a new U.S.-Pakistan Center for Advanced Studies in Agriculture and Food Security, is being funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development. Reportedly, the center will make it possible for faculty members and graduate students from both countries to study and do research at each other’s campuses. The project is being designed to update curriculum and technical resources at Pakistan’s University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, according to UC Davis.
“UC Davis has been partnering with colleagues in Pakistan since 2009, sharing expertise in agriculture from crop production to post-harvest handling,” said James Hill, Associate Dean Emeritus of International Programs for the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences at UC Davis. “Establishment of this new center will allow us to build on those efforts, with a renewed emphasis on an exchange of faculty and graduate students.”
During its first year of the center’s funding, its expected to plan several workshops to assist the University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, with technology transfer and entrepreneurship to strengthen its connections to the private sector. UC Davis also will initiate programs in both research and curriculum development to improve graduate studies.
Hill continued by explaining that two other Pakistan-focused projects are already underway at the college, primarily in the area of horticultural crops and agricultural extension activities.
The newly funded center at UC Davis is the most recent of partnerships between the U.S. and Pakistan, which have included a $127 million investment from USAID. Agriculture is the largest sector of Pakistan’s economy and provides jobs for half of the country’s labor force.
