GDC Baramulla organizes lecture on CRISPR under TEP

Baramulla : Government Degree College, Baramulla organized a lecture on ‘CRISPR and its Applications in Agriculture’ under an ongoing ‘Teachers Enrichment Program’ (TEP) sponsored under CPE – a flagship program of UGC.
Dr Arif Tasleem Jan, Assistant Professor, BGSBU, Rajouri, Jammu & Kashmir was the Guest Speaker on the occasion.
At the outset, Prof. Syed Rehmat Shah, Acting Principal, Government Degree College, Baramulla formally welcomed and felicitated the guest and tabled a concise account of the standing and position of the host college at state and national level.
Prof. A. M. Chalkoo, Convener IQAC and CPE/UGC scheme and Coordinator, TEP, presented a detailed account of TEP and the UGC scheme of CPE.
Dr Arif Tasleem Jan discussed the 17 Sustainable Development Goals set by the UN to be achieved by 2030 and their importance in facing the global challenges like poverty, inequality, climate change, environmental degradation.
The speaker focused on the second development goal viz Zero hunger by achieving food security by doubling agricultural productivity through sustainable food production systems.
However, he said this has its own challenges like increase in population, shrinkage of agricultural land due to urbanization, climate changes that bring abiotic stresses like drought, increase in temperature and loss of agricultural produce by pests etc. thereby forcing us to look for an alternative like to develop technology to overcome these challenges.
The speaker discussed and deliberated upon the role of CRISPR-Cas9 technology and how it can be used in different crops to improve traits such as yield, disease tolerance and added that it is really going to be a key to increase agricultural production to achieve food for all, hence zero hunger.
This guest lecture was followed by a brainstorming question-answer session wherein elucidations were rendered by the speaker as and when sought by the participants.
The session reasoned out with a formal vote of thanks proposed by Dr. Shah Ubaid Ullah, Assistant Professor in Biotechnology, Government Degree College, Baramulla.