The Promotion of urban horticulture is crucial to meet food needs and tackle rising inflation, This was stated by Qamar -uz- Zaman in an inaugural ceremony of two days “International Conference on Urban Horticulture: Local Prospects and Global Scenario”, held in PMAS-Arid Agriculture University, Rawalpindi (PMAS-AAUR) aiming to encourage and mobilize the participants for urban horticulture to full fill their basic food necessities. Leading Experts on Urban Horticulture from USA, Malaysia, Egypt, United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia and different national organization from Pakistan participated and shared their views In this training, where the Vice-Chancellor of PMAS-AAUR Prof. Dr. Qamar-uz-Zaman participated as a chief guest along with faculty members and students.
During his address Dr. Qamar said that COVID-19 pandemic has recently exposed the fragility of food supply chain which created a dire need to give focus on development of local food security system in the urban areas which can only be possibly by the promotion of urban horticulture. He appreciated the Various Pilot Projects carried out by different governmental and non-governmental organization including NARC with the name of Kitchen Gardening, ZTBL and Agriculture Department government of Punjab by providing free and low cast vegetable Seeds in the urban areas. Rapid population growth and massive urbanization in Pakistan, the agriculture land is not only shrinking day by day but causing food insecurity also so the only solution of these issues is to increase production and urban horticulture, he said.
He encouraged the students and faculty members to take this event as a learning platform and get the benefit from the experience of national and international experts and emphasized on the need and importance of Urban Horticulture in Pakistan.
Addressing the closing ceremony Prof. Dr. Muhammad Azam Khan Chairman, Department of Horticulture PMAS-AAUR thanked all the participants and said that keeping in view the needs understanding the importance of the urban horticulture Arid Agriculture University has developed new course for Undergraduate students on Urban Horticulture and also successfully won an outreach project of 7.3 Million for twin Cities which will be started in coming winter in 2022.
