Department of Entomology, College of Agriculture, Rajendranagar, Hyderabad, 500030.
* Former Dean of Agriculture, Acharya N.G. Ranga Agricultural University, Rajendranagar, Hyderabad 500 030
Curriculum plays an important role in imparting knowledge and skills required for human resource development. The Deans Committee constituted by Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) recommends appropriate curricula for various degree programmes from time to time. However, the Academic Councils of respective State Agricultural Universities (SAUs) formulate the curriculum to suit their needs keeping in view the recommendations of Dean's Committee.
The credit load for Under graduate (UG) programmes in State Agricultural Universities (SAUs) ranges from 145 to 222 with 12.0 to 18.2 per cent weightage given to plant protection courses. While developing curriculum for pest management (PM), besides emphasising PM aspects in existing courses, introduction of new course exclusively on PM dealing with basic concepts and principles at undergraduate level needs to be considered. At postgraduate level PM should be offered as a core course dealing with policies, principles, strategies and certain case studies. Wherever there is demand and job opportunities exist, starting a separate postgraduate programme on pest management can be considered. It is worthwhile to give adequate weightage to PM topics at various levels of school education. With rapid advancement of science and technology and constantly changing agricultural scenario, the pest management curriculum is to be revised from time to time to enable the students face the future challenges.
