Was Inaugurated by Sanjay Dhotre,

Union Minister of State For Education,

Communication And Electronics And IT

CHANDIGARH

Oct 14, 2020, HT Correspondent
Hindustan Times, Ludhiana

Sanjay Dhotre Union minister of state for education, communication and electronics and IT, on Wednesday virtually inaugurated an ‘Aquaponics vertical farming system’ developed at Guru Angad Dev Veterinary and Animal Sciences University (GADVASU).

The system was established by Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Mohali, under the collaborative project funded by the ministry of electronics and information technology (MEITY), GOI.

Dhotre emphasized on the need to modernize food production sectors to double farmers’ income and enhance climate change resilience among the farming community.

He said that aquaponics is a promising technology for organic farming and there is a need to publicize such technologies for the wellbeing of the environment and humans.

Inderjeet Singh, the vice-chancellor of GADVASU, said that aquaponics involves a synergistic combination of aquaculture and hydroponics to promote vertical farming with enhanced nutrient utilization efficiency through recycling of water between the two components to produce fish and vegetables together.

He added that it offers potential future solutions to global warming, with only 10-12% water and land requirement compared to traditional fish and vegetable farming systems, fulfilling the concept of ‘More crop per drop’.The V-C said that the facility will help GADVASU take up required R&D for its optimized utilization under climatic conditions of the state, especially for stakeholders with small landholdings.

In the keynote address, Hemant Darbari, DG, C-DAC, said that the automated aquaponics system will serve as an excellent R&D and demonstration provision for skill development in aspiring stakeholders of the region to produce more food from less land.

Jyoti Arora, special secretary, MEITY, spoke on making the facility sustainable through innovative techniques to attract more youth into the technology-driven agriculture sector.

The project in charge, Jaspal Singh, joint director, C-DAC, and his team implemented the project at GADVASU with Meera D Ansal, dean, college of fisheries, and Kulbir Singh, principle olericulturist, PAU, under the leadership of JPS Gill, director research, GADVASU.