The establishment of the first-ever research centre focused on agriculture and intercropping called the ‘Pakistan National Research Centre of Intercropping (NCRI)’ at the Islamia University of Bahawalpur (IUB) has been officially approved.
This is the first national-level research centre that is incorporating technological advancements with intercropping. Muhammad Ali Raza from Sichuan Agricultural University stated the following to CEN:
“Before this, there was no national research centre dedicated to intercropping in Pakistan. The centre firstly will be affiliated with the key laboratory of China’s Ministry of Agriculture undertaken by Sichuan Agricultural University (SAU), which is well-known throughout the world for intercropping research, especially in maize and soybean.
Pakistan wants to increase its soybean production desperately.”
This is truly a remarkable step taken to further improve the agricultural sector of the country by coupling it with technology. Though there have been devices, such as intelligent quadcopters, which have been upscaling agriculture for a while it is still not enough to oversee areas such as intercropping which requires more proximity and sustainability.
The primary aim of the research centre will be to introduce new techniques which will improve the efficiency of intercropping in the country while ensuring fewer resources are utilized and conventional agricultural practices are replaced with advanced methods.
