Global Institute for Food Security at USask partnership leads to inauguration of ag-tech centre in Bangladesh

Mar 24, 2023

The Global Institute for Food Security (GIFS) at the University of Saskatchewan (USask) is pleased to announce the inauguration of an agricultural technology centre at the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI) in Gazipur, Bangladesh, as part of its ongoing partnership with the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council (BARC) of the Bangladesh Ministry of Agriculture.
GIFS and BARC signed a memorandum of understanding in 2020 to advance knowledge and technologies for agricultural research and development in Bangladesh. The partnership includes collaborations with a variety of partners in Canada and Bangladesh.

The inauguration of the ag-tech centre marks another milestone in the partnership’s goal of delivering sustainable food security through programs in Bangladesh focused on enhancing farmer incomes, addressing the effects of climate change, and strengthening the country’s delivery of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, including reducing hunger and empowering women.

Based in Gazipur, the ag-tech centre will offer programs to enhance crop breeding and plant improvement, advance soil health and quality, improve soil water retention, increase data management and analytics, and deliver innovations for post-harvest food handling and processing – a specific area of concern for the country.

Bangladesh has chronic food security challenges that are increasing due to a rapidly growing population, climate-induced stress like salinity intrusion, drought and heat, loss of agricultural land because of rapid urbanization, and post-harvest loss, which in some cases is nearly 50 per cent.

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