Srinagar: Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology, Kashmir commenced a two-week training programme on ‘IoT for Smart Agriculture’ at College of Agricultural Engineering and Technology, main campus Shalimar here.
The training is organised under the World Bank-ICAR funded National Agricultural Higher Education Project (NAHEP) for institutional development of SKUAST-K, in collaboration with Innovians Technology, Noida UP. These programmes have been organized under the patronage of Prof JP Sharma, Vice-Chancellor SKUAST-K. Students, research scholars and faculty of SKUAST-K and various institutes are part of the two-week training programme.
Prof JN Khan HoD SWE CoAE&T, SKUAST-K while welcoming the participants stressed creating a knowledge base in the field of IoT for revolutionising the agricultural sector.
SKUAST-K’s Director Planning and Monitoring and PI NAHEP, Prof Nazir Ahmad Ganai, in his opening remark, highlighted the importance of IoT in agriculture and smart farming. He emphasised the importance of sensing, automation and analytics technology to shift from conventional to modern agriculture. While lauding the students’ efforts in proposing innovative ideas for solving the problems of society, he encouraged them to focus on innovation and entrepreneurship. He said the goal of this training programme is to nurture novel ideas of students and provide them with the resources needed to develop innovative and disruptive solutions that operate on the Internet of Things (IoT) for solving problems in agriculture and allied domains. While highlighting the role of NAHEP in conducting various training programmes he also talked about establishing an IoT and Robotics laboratory in SKUAST-K which will help students and faculty to develop technologies and Products for smart agriculture.
Prof. Farooq Ahmad Zaki, NRHM consultant while addressing the participants highlighted the role of NAHEP in shaping the educational setup in line with National Educational Policy 2020. He said such types of training programmes are necessary to upskill and expand the career prospects of students. He said that there is a need of conducting such training programmes to develop human capital with qualities suitable for driving the fourth industrial revolution.
The course instructor Syed Asadur Rahaman from Innovians Technology gave a detailed overview of the training programme. He explained the importance of IoT technology and its applications in various agriculture and allied sectors.
Dr Showkat Rasool Coordinator of the training programme conducted the proceedings of the function.

KR Desk