Hyderabad: As part of tripartite agreement between Professor Jayashankar Telangana State Agricultural University(PJTSAU), Western Sydney University(WSU) Australia and Riverbridge Ventures, India had decided to develop “Gyan Kisan”app with the aim to empower and uplift livelihoods of farmers in Telangana State by providing agricultural knowledge and market coordination. In view of this a meeting was held under the chairmanship of the Vice Chancellor, PJTSAU Dr. V. Praveen Rao at Administrative building of the university, at Rajendranagar here on Thursday. Prof Athula Ginige, Dr. SK Hooda, of Western Sydney University representatives were joined in this meeting through video call from Sydney and the University officers of PJTSAU, Representative of Riverbridge Ventures India were also participated.
That, during this meeting they were discussed on to assist the team of River bridge Ventures to obtain scientific knowledge relevant to locally grown crops, varieties and associated best practices to be converted into actionable information and deliver to farmers via mobile phones through proposed app. And also review Gyan kisan app and provide feedback to improve further. Dr Rao, suggested, the newly developed app should be helpful for larger section of farmers who are cultivating five major crops in the Telangana State. They have also decided to organize workshop with policy makers, Krishi Vignana Kendras’(KVK’s), District Agricultural Advisory and Transfer of Technology Centers(DAATTC’s) coordinators, frontline agricultural extension officers of agriculture department and NGO’s who are working on farmers issues to explore ways agriculture extension services can be transformed and based on the identified possibilities develop few new scenarios. One or two academics from WSU will come to PJTSAU to take part in this proposed workshop in the month of March tentatively.
They were also discussed on to plan few projects to be carried out to implement and evaluate the identified scenarios and identify academics and students at PJTSAU who will be involved in these scenario transformation research projects. Further, discussed on possibilities to arrange some of the PJTSAU academics and students to visit WSU and spend some time working on the details associated with new scenarios to be trialled in Telangana. For this proposal, WSU had reacted positively for hosting the student and faculty of PJTSAU.
The University Officers of PJTSAU Dr. KS Dangi, Dr. D. RajiReddy, Dr. T Pradeep, Dr. KVS Meena Kumari, Dr. Sadasivarao, Dr. Kalvakuntla Jeevan Rao and Representative of Riverbridge Ventures Ms Ishwarya were among the participants.
