SRINAGAR: Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology of Kashmir (SKUAST-K) said it has entered a decisive phase of innovation, expansion, and commercialisation, with Vice Chancellor Prof Nazir Ahmad Ganai asserting that the institution is now driving changes that could fundamentally alter Kashmir’s farm economy. Addressing a news conference, he said the university, ranked the No 1 agriculture university in India, has reached a point where research, start-ups, land-use planning, and technology-led interventions are converging into a scaled transformation.
Prof Ganai traced the shift to 2019, when the university drew up its Institutional Development Plan, a roadmap that aligned agricultural education with futuristic skills, emerging job markets, new research priorities, and a broad redesign of the campus. The plan, later found to be fully compatible with the National Education Policy in 2020, enabled what he described as “a change in the university’s DNA”. It helped reposition the campus as a site where land, technology, and innovation could be converted into sustainable business units.
The IDP is World Bank-supported, and the VC said the early push was to convert a tract of land into a productive business ecosystem. From that point, an in-house start-up culture began taking shape. The campus now hosts seven start-ups with a combined yearly turnover of more than Rs 1 crore, signalling what the administration believes is the beginning of a self-sustaining innovation pipeline.
On the farm side, the VC said shrinking land in Kashmir — a “land deficit space” — makes productivity central to food security and income. He cited the university’s progress in rice, noting that Kashmir once harvested one tonne per hectare but now produces up to twelve tonnes per hectare with the SR4 variety, three times the national average. The university has also revived Mushkbudji, Kashmir’s famed fragrant rice variety that is fetching more than Basmati in markets. Another aromatic variant, SR5, is being commercialised under the name Shalimar Sugand.
On saffron, where this year’s yield is reportedly less than half the previous crop, Prof Ganai said growers are relying too heavily on migrant labour even as climate impacts intensify. SKUAST-K is now working on automation tools for flower picking and deweeding to protect the sector from further shocks.
He said the university is also moving into the abattoir system to professionalise it, and is strengthening research on Ambri — Kashmir’s indigenous fragrant apple known for its long shelf life. SKUAST-K has evolved four new variants with shorter gestation periods, and sample boxes have been sent to senior officials to promote the variety as a future commercial asset for the region.
In vegetable cultivation, mulching and polyhouses are being introduced, which, the VC said, can increase farm incomes more than tenfold. The larger horticulture challenge, however, is high-density apple. Kashmir requires around 400 million high-density saplings, a volume that cannot be met locally for now. Imports from Europe will continue until a domestic nursery system matures. FPOs have been constituted, and the university’s tissue culture facility is producing new saplings to reduce dependence on costly imports. The aim, he said, is to position Kashmir as a source for high-density plants with potential markets in Central Asia, an idea that could create a major economic boom even though converting traditional orchards will take time.
SKUAST-K has introduced dwarf walnut plants and vibration technology for harvesting. Walnut picking leads to frequent injuries and deaths in Kashmir; mechanisation, he said, will bring safety and efficiency. Climate change, meanwhile, is altering pest cycles. Some insects now emerge earlier and lay eggs inside flowers, leading to invisible crop losses as the fruit develops with insects trapped inside. For this, the university has introduced pheromone pads targeting insects during the egg-laying stage.
In the regulatory space, Prof Ganai said human medicines in Kashmir are substandard but SKUAST-K is ensuring pesticide standards remain robust. A policy on this, he said, is being prepared for the government.
On dairy, Jammu and Kashmir ranks No 1 in milk production, but the VC said the sector remains highly unorganised. On mutton, the university is promoting high-yield breeds such as Texel and Deeper varieties that grow faster and fetch higher prices. He spoke of a sheep that reached 125 kilograms in a year, and mentioned a farmer who sold male sheep to Tamil Nadu at Rs 95,000 each. Gene editing and AI are being used to influence cattle sex ratios to increase female births and push milk production to the next level.
The VC said SKUAST-K is the only one among India’s 1,100 universities that independently persuaded the Ministry of External Affairs to facilitate foreign admissions. As a result, scores of foreign students are now enrolled and the university has expanded exchange programmes and global tie-ups. An aide to the Prime Minister, he said, remarked that the country must learn from SKUAST-K’s model.
Alongside these initiatives, the university reported a landmark achievement: securing its 100th patent. SKUAST-K’s innovation drive began with the World Bank-funded National Agricultural Higher Education Project in 2020 and took shape through an Innovation and Startup Policy that established the SKIIE Centre, which has since supported 89 start-ups. The university has filed 100 patents, 43 of them in the first ten months of 2025. The VC said the university has shifted from “Education for Innovation to Innovation for Education”, turning research from publication-oriented work into problem-solving outputs.
From only five patents in four decades to ninety-five in five years, the surge marks a structural reorientation of the university. Several technologies are already being commercialised under the “Patents to Products” approach. The VC called SKUAST-K’s start-ups “BabyCorns”, symbolic of a new innovation culture, and said the milestone reflects the combined effort of researchers, faculty, students, and support teams. He praised the IP and Technology Management Cell and said the new century of patents is “the beginning of a new era”.
SKUAST-K, ranked among India’s top agricultural universities, believes this new model of translational research, entrepreneurship, and inclusive growth is placing Kashmir at the front of a bioeconomy transformation. The next test, the VC suggested, may be whether the region can mobilise the 400 million high-density plants it needs — and whether innovation can keep pace with Kashmir’s rapidly changing climate and economy.
