UAS-B to confer 847 degrees, 129 gold medals

The University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore (UAS-B), which is celebrating golden jubilee year, will confer 566 bachelor’s, 222 master’s and 59 doctoral degrees at its 48th convocation on Sunday. 

Of the total 847 students who will get the degrees, 486 are male and 361 female. A total of 129 gold medals will also be given away, K Narayana Gowda, the university’s vice-chancellor, told reporters here on Friday. He also announced a number of programmes to coincide with the convocation. 

The UAS-B will also confer honorary degrees on various personalities. Doctor of Science (DSc) degrees will be conferred on S Ayyappan, Director General of Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR); C Kempanna, former director general of ICAR; Sonny Ramaswamy, Director of National Institute of Food and Agriculture, US, and MV Rajasekharan, MLC and former Union minister. 

On the occasion, the university will also release two varieties of seeds: Bangalore Red Gram (BRG-5) and UASB-Groundnut (KCG-6). The former is a wilt resistant variant which gives yield of 25 quintals per hectare in 165-170 days in rain-fed as well as irrigated conditions while the latter gives a yield of 20 quintals per hectare in 108-112 days. 

In order to encourage youth from rural areas to stay engaged in agriculture and discourage their migration to cities, the university has submitted to the Union government the ARYA (Attracting and Retaining Youth in Agriculture) scheme which focuses on natural resource management, marketing, packaging and branding of agro-products and integrated farming system, Gowda added. 

The UAS-B has also sought to form a milk producers’ cooperative society. The scheme is expected to be implemented in Bangalore Rural and Chikkaballapur at a cost of Rs five crore.