Prof gets Young Scientist Award

Our Correspondent

Jalandhar, June 22

Having revealed the facts in his research work that more than 2.5 billion people in the world, mostly comprising Asian population, are suffering from micro-nutrient deficiency mainly due to the absence of zinc and iron in the meal they consume, a city-based researcher Dr Bhupendra Mathpal, received ‘Young Scientist Award-2019’, in the recently-concluded 3rd international conference on ‘Global Initiatives in Agricultural and Applied Sciences for Eco-Friendly Environment (GIASE-2019).

The conference was held in Tribhuvan University Kathmandu, Nepal.

Bhupendra, who is presently working as Assistant Professor at School of Agriculture in LPU, received the award for his contribution in the field of ‘Plant Physiology’. 

“Besides, the outbreak is maximum in Asian countries because more than 50 per cent of the Asian population consume rice as the staple food. The major chunk of this population comprises Indians, as rice and wheat intake is maximum in India.” said Bhupendra. 

“Therefore, to prevent people from this nutrition disorder, the agricultural techniques need to be modified to restore the nutritional quality of the cereal grains,” he added.

Through the chapters of “Plant Nutrition”, the researcher said farmers should be apprised of alternative techniques of using the zinc and iron fertilizers in good quantity. 

He suggested that the cheapest way to enrich the grains was by applying the fertilizer through modified methods like spraying them on the plants through foliar method. In which the liquid fertilizers were applied directly on the leaves of plants for its effective feeding. 

Besides, Bhupendra also stressed on the usage of organic fertilizers, that improve the intake of micro-nutrients in plants.