School of Agriculture & Bio-Engineering

Overview:

School of Agriculture & Bio-Engineering committed to Sustainable Development Goal 2: “ZERO HUNGER”

Agricultural and Bio-engineering deal cover a vast gamut of farming methods, crops and biological organisms. Agricultural and Bio-engineers work on agricultural equipment designs, find alternative uses for natural resources and discover solutions for problems between farming systems and crops. Apart from SDG 2 the school contributes significantly to SDGs 1,4,12,13 and 15. As an agricultural engineer, you can work across the agriculture value chain in areas such as manufacturing, agri-tech, research and sales. Besides this, students can specialize in emerging areas such as Phyto-pharmaceuticals that are and will remain in high demand for the foreseeable future.

A student-centric pedagogy, project-based approach and design-driven curriculum provides students with an inclination for complex problem solving, design, innovation, and a passion for learning.

The mission of the School of Agriculture and Bio-Engineering (SoABE) through its various programmes through its various programmes is to build individuals who possess technical competence, community centricity and are driven to make transformational change. This program is strongly underpinned by application of various digital technologies such as the IoT, Analytics and AI/ML across areas such as:

Departments

SoABE has full-fledged departments for areas such as Agriculture Engineering, Dairy Technology and Phytopharmaceuticals. Each of the departments is equipped with requisite facilities such as laboratories and smart classrooms and collaborate with other schools on campus such as Engineering & Technology to ensure holistic learning. Each department has well qualified, dedicated and experienced faculty, supplemented by industry expert and global content.

Support for Placements and Higher Studies

University has a dedicated career counselling and training cell that ensure that the students are able to individually identify and are prepared to effectively realize their career aspirations. These could range from securing a job, start their own enterprise and/or pursue higher studies. Extra classes are arranged throughout for various competitive examination such as JRF and GATE. Besides this, the students are supported to achieve English proficiency, reasoning and quantitative ability levels required irrespective of their career aspirations.

Campus

The campus spread of 150+ acres is an oasis of greenery, environmentally friendly buildings and excellent facilities to ensure it’s a ‘home away from home’. SoABE has also implemented a number of Natural Resource Management (NRM) practices in the campus having around 1600 mango trees and 600 teak and other plants of different varieties. These include watershed development, recharging ground water and soil nutrition management.

Campus has multiple sports facilities such as international standard basketball and tennis courts, flood lit multi-purpose playground and cricket practice pitches. Besides our dedicated hostels and mess facilities, campus also has multiple shops/marketplaces that act as excellent locations for the students to meet and socialize with their peers.

Other facilities also include dedicated banking counter, ATM as well as a dispensary (with a doctor and three paramedical staff and an ambulance).

Library

The School has well-equipped library with broad band Wi-Fi connectivity. It provides a sound physical and digital learning environment round the clock. The learning materials are in the Printed, Audio and Visual form. The library is integrated into the University’s Management Information System (MIS). It deploys Open Access system with different work stations.

Accommodation

Being a residential program, the School encourages students and faculty to live on campus. There are dedicated hostels for boys and girls offering multiple configuration/options. About 80% students and 50% faculty and supporting staff stay on campus. There are 10 hostels (6 for boys with 304 rooms accommodating 1021 students and 4 for girls with 104 rooms accommodating 318 students).

Clubs and Extra Curricular Activities:

Besides extensive sports facilities and events, there are student run Health Club, Yoga Club, Adventure Club, Meditation Club and Karate Club under the guidance of respective faculty in-charges. The students regularly participate in cultural, NSS, NCC and other socially responsible activities.

Key Highlights

• State of the art facilities such as IoT enabled poly-houses, drones for multiple applications, genetics and plant breeding labs, food and dairy processing facilities
• Opportunities to pursue multi-disciplinary areas such as precision agriculture, cultivation of value added crops and management of livestock using digital technologies (AI/ML, Analytics and AR/VR)
• Opportunities for off campus internships with leading organizations, development organizations, research entities as well as directly with farmer/agriculture focussed organizations
• Opportunities for gaining direct experience of managing industry class food processing facilities from sourcing to delivery/selling of the final product
• University owned best in class equipment such as a combined harvester, irrigation equipment, agri-tools and tractors
• Strong industry linkages with frequent interactions with leading agri-scientists and professionals

AgroForestry:

To increase the local biodiversity in the campus different trial and treatments are being practiced under agro forestry. Agro forestry is a land use system which integrates trees and shrubs on farmlands and rural landscapes to enhance productivity, profitability, diversity and ecosystem sustainability. To improve the land ability and sustainability different trials are needed.

The practices also include alley cropping and inter cropping pattern which improve the sustainability of the land. The agro forestry land inside the campus is surrounded with teak (Tectona grandis) and bamboo species which act as a natural fencing to the land. The land is cultivated with different agri silvi horticultural system where it includes mango tree (Mangifera indica) as a horticultural species under alley cropping practices.

To investigate the growth rate and development in the same land for both tree and crop species the mother beds were prepared with a size of 1m width and 10m length. 10 numbers of plots were prepared by the students of BSc agriculture under the supervision of faculties from department of forestry. The crops were raised with five combinations of agricultural crop and tree like maize and Acacia auriculoformis, Maize with Samanea saman, sweet corn with Emblica officinalis, Aswagandha ( Withania somnifera) with eucalyptus, Kalmegh (Andrographis paniculata) with Acacia tree species.

The impact of tree on crop species was studied periodically to know about the sharing of land in between them. The study helps to provide information that the maize and Acacia auriculoformis, Maize with Samanea saman were the excellent choice for the land sustainability followed by Kalmegh (Andrographis paniculata) with Acacia tree species.

A separate plot was made where the Kalmegh (Andrographis paniculata) with Acacia and Aswagandha with Embelica officinalis were grown. Different treatments were studied in the above field to know about the growth and development of the particular plant in the land. The humic acid with different concentration and vermin wash was treated in the plot to investigate the crop development in the land.

Agricultural Farm Development:

To improve the local biodiversity different farm buildings under agriculture programs was constructed. There are three farms where the
development of different trials and treatment are being done to increase the sustainability of the land. It also includes high yielding varieties (HYVs) and hybrids which are having more production potential than national average.
The crops are produced under various climatic conditions, land situations and cropping systems. The research farm named as Bagushala is situated at Seventh Mile, a location 10 km from the Centurion campus.
In Bagushala the students learn farming and a lab was constructed in 2014 where the student can perform their practical related to agronomy and crop development. The area of the farm is around 5 acres with sufficient supply of water to the field. For transport a farm road has been constructed which can improve the accessibility by the locals and students.
The farm named Ranadevi is also designed as per the requirement by the students. The farm is located in Ranadevi village which is 5 km from the Centurion campus. Construction of farm learning centre and lab is in progress on the land. College bus, tractors and other farm machinery can be accessed easily through a wide farm road.
Another part of the scenario under the land sustainability is a farm in Gondahati area. Gandahati waterfall is a tourist place of Gajapati District of Odisha, which has been attracting a large number of visitors during winter. This waterfall is 153 km from Berhampur and 30 km from Paralakhemundi.
A wooden bridge has been constructed for crossing the stream at this point. There is a wooden fencing at the turning point from where we enter into the falls area till the steps that take one near to the waterfall.
A garden has been maintained for the amusement of the visitors with small benches, swings and see-saws for the children to play. The Centurion university farm is distributed over 12 acres of land where the lab and learning centre has been constructed to perform all the
experiments conducted by the students.

All the land is being used to grow crops like rice, maize, shorgham, bajra, finger millets, proso millet and horticultural species under different treatments and trials. The organic farming is one of the important trials under the land sustainability.
Through the organic farming restoration and conditioning of soil can be achieved by applying natural input to the field. The treatment with different bio-degradable input in the organic farming were studied and the maximization of yield of the product was analyzed.
The investigation, limitations, technological recommendations and future scope of study have been narrated for production sustainability and livelihood security of the farmers which may be helpful to the researchers and policy maker.

 Bakery Unit
  Mushroom Unit
  Vermicompost Unit

Reports addressing various sustainability goals: