Preference for tribals at Ambalavayal Agriculture College

Thrissur: The new College of Agriculture at Ambalavayal in Wayanad will be inaugurated on Septem-ber 16. This college under the Kerala Agricultural University (KAU) would give preference to tribal students considering the demography of Wayanad, agriculture minister V.S. Sunil Kumar said.

Speaking to media persons here on Tuesday he said that the Ambalavayal College would also be made a ‘Centre of excellence’ in collaboration with Netherlands government and a major scheme to promote floriculture would be launched in co-ordination with experts from Netherlands who had expressed their readiness to start promotion of floriculture that includes a process beginning from making of seedlings to packing of flowers for export, he added.

“The executive council of KAU can make an amendment in the existing rules to give admission for more tribal students considering large number of tribal settlements in Wayanad. The climate of high ranges in Wayanad suits floriculture and that was the reason why the district was chosen for the project linked to Netherlands,” Mr Kumar noted.

The minister said that Netherlands ambassador had recently held talks with him at Thiruva-nathapuram and in the next visit, hopefully the MoU for the ‘centre of excellence’ with the assistance of Netherlands will be signed. At Ambal-avayal college as many as 60 students will get admission in an academic year.

KAU vice-chancellor R. Chandra Babu said that the varsity will be sending its experts to get trained in artificial intelligence and it will help in disease and pest control.  in vast stretches of cultivable lands.

“The artificial intelligence system will be storing all the details of the pests and plant diseases and the system in return will alert if there is any pest infection in even a small portion of farms spread over hectares of land,” he said.

Chief Whip K Rajan was also present at the presser.