03-08-2013, 04:26 PM
Teaching in Plant Pathology: Present Status and Future Strategies
ABSTRACT
The science of Plant Pathology had played a major role in increasing the crop productivity through effective management of diseases. The demands for improvement in the quality traits of agricultural produce have also enhanced the relevance of eco-friendly plant protection measures. The increasing application of biotechnology and modern tools in plant protection research has demanded human resource development by restructuring of teaching curricula to meet the needs of the universities, demand of the industry and providing global competitiveness. The disease diagnosis as well as management requires the services of trained Plant Pathologist who are well acquainted both with basic concept as well as allied fields. The ICAR initiated to reform the curricula for improving the quality of education, its relevance to the needs and uniformity in the country. The new course curricula have essential key courses such as mycology, plant bacteriology, plant virology, molecular aspects of plant pathogenesis etc. There is dire need to have specialists in these areas. The courses on molecular diagnostics, molecular basis of host-pathogen interaction, population biology of pathogens using molecular tools, and genetic engineering for disease resistance have been added to the course curricula in universities but may not have much impact since in most of the agricultural universities; there is paucity of scientists to teach basic fundamental courses as well as advanced courses. The existing teachers lack in-depth knowledge as they have to teach several courses in a semester to meet the mandate of the system. This results in vast variation in the standard of theory and practical teaching of the various courses. In most of the agricultural universities, mycology and basic bacteriology have taken a back seat. Similarly, knowledge of biotechnological techniques is the need of the hour to develop disease resistant genotypes and majority of the teachers do not have sufficient exposure to this field. There must be rigorous trainings for teachers at entry level. Most teachers are students of the same university without outside exposure and unaware of many national and international perspectives of agriculture. It would be in the interest of the development of agriculture teaching if out of three degrees, two are from different universities. International exposure of teachers is also essential and adequate opportunities to participate in international trainings, professional conferences and other events should be provided. In agricultural universities, many seats in masters and in doctorate degrees are lying vacant due to non-availability of students The gap presently being felt in terms of human resource availability in agricultural field is mainly due to the fact that most of the students and parents have more attraction towards medical and engineering education. Steps need to be taken up in promoting agriculture education from the level of high school, organizing education fair, encouraging high school student’s trips to university and colleges and other means to create general awareness. Number of fellowships at degree level should be increased. These steps will help in bridging gap between demand and supply of quality graduates. Further, to attract students towards masters and doctoral level education, adequate number of fellowships must be made available as to relieve the students and parents from financial burden. These steps if taken up in right earnest will go in long way in generating the human resource for quality teaching as well as in mitigating the sufferings of the farmers. This will further prove useful for generating human resource competent to meet global challenges and competitiveness in order to handle plant protection problems successfully.