Oz officials visit Nauni university

Tribune News Service

Solan, November 18

The authorities of Dr YS Parmar University of Horticulture and Forestry, Nauni, met representatives of Western Sydney University (WSU), Australia, and Wellantcollege, Netherlands, on the campus here today.

Dr Robert Spooner Hart, Associate Professor of Allied Entomology, and Evolutionary Ecologist Dr Simon Tierney, both representatives of WSU, held talks with Dr Parvinder Kaushal, Vice-Chancellor, Dr JN Sharma, Director Research, Dr ML Bhardwaj, Dean Horticulture, and other senior officials of the university for further collaboration. The two universities had signed a letter of intent (LoI) in December last year for joint collaborative research, exchange programmes and exchange of information in horticultural and forestry sciences.

The two universities would work towards the exchange of academic staff for teaching and research activities and the exchange of Ph.D students for study and participation in research programmes.

As part of the collaboration, both universities would undertake work on honeybees and bumblebees as pollinators of fruit crops, particularly in apple and cherry. The scientists are visiting India as part of the Indo-Australian Collaboration project on crop pollination. The team also visited the Entomology Department, including the university apiary.

Dr Spooner said the two institutions could undertake comparative studies in similar working areas and look towards joint publications in high impact international journals.

Dr Kaushal said the university would expedite the signing of the MoU so that students and faculty members could derive the maximum benefit from the collaboration.