Palampur: The Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) has ranked CSK Himachal Pradesh Agriculture University at eleventh place, and Dr YS Parmar University of Horticulture and Forestry (UHF), Nauni was ranked at 12th position among all farm universities of the country.
The National Dairy Research Institute (NDRI), Karnal, and the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI), New Delhi, have been ranked at first and second places respectively in this rankings. GB Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar and Haryana Agriculture University, Hisar have bagged the third and fourth positions respectively. Panjab Agriculture University, Ludhiana and Guru Angad Dev Veterinary and Animal Sciences University, Ludhiana are at seventh and eighth positions respectively.
The ICAR ranking was initiated in 2016 to improve the standard of higher agricultural education in the country. In all, 60 agricultural universities of India featured in the ranking this year. The universities were judged on parameters like student and faculty profile, publications and citations, research, technologies commercialized etc.
Earlier in the year 2016 ICAR ranking, Palampur University was placed at 23rd place and in the year 2017, it moved to 19th rank while for the year 2018 ranking released on 16 July 2019, the university ranking jumped to 11th rank.
Prof. Ashok Kumar Sarial, Vice-Chancellor, while expressing his happiness at the ranking status of his university, gave credit of this great achievement to the faculty, non-teaching staff and the students and the new work culture created by them.
Making a significant improvement, the Dr YS Parmar University of Horticulture and Forestry Nauni has been ranked at 12th position in the ranking of agricultural universities and research institutes. This year the university has improved 26 places in the list.
In 2016, Nauni University was placed at 51st position, which it improved to 38 in 2017. This year the university improved 26 places to bag 12th position in this ranking. The university has been continuously ranked among the top universities in the country. For the past three years, UHF has been the highest-ranked university in Himachal Pradesh in the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development’s NIRF rankings. This year, the university had achieved 80th position in the top 100 universities in the country and was the only one from the state to find a place in this list.
The University has performed quite well on various parameters including the performance of students in ICAR NET, JRF, SRF and other state and national level competitive examinations. The excellent placement of students in public and private enterprises, quality publications, technology transfer initiatives, implementation of ICAR Deans’ committee recommendations, timely release of grants from the state government and internal revenue generation were areas, which helped the university to register this big jump in rankings.
