Fish are one of the most important sources of protein in public provisioning in India, and so the agreement signed on aquaculture, carp genetics and sweetwater fish breeding by State Secretary for Agricultural Economy György Czerván and State Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture of the Republic of India Prabeer Kumar Basu at the meeting of the Hungarian-Indian Agricultural Workgroup is of great significance.

The utilization of Hungarian gene banks and fish breeding experience should lead to excellent results in the farming of Hungarian carp breeds in India. The practical application of the agreement is now the responsibility of the Research Institute for Fisheries, Aquaculture and Irrigation (HAKI, Hungary) and the Central Institute of Freshwater Aquaculture (CIFA, India).

The agreement reached between the Hungarian Research Institute for Animal Breeding and Nutrition (ÁTK) and the National Dairy Research Institute of India includes agricultural cooperation spanning the preservation of animal genes and the modernisation of the breeding of dairy cattle.

The Hungarian and Indian State Secretaries also discussed Sweet Sorghum technologies and the support of scientific research on potato cultivation. The Agricultural Science Centre of the Pannon University and the Hungarian Institute of Agricultural Engineering are cooperating with their Indian counterparts in these programmes.

An agreement was also reached between the Faculty of Horticultural Science of the Corvinus University of Budapest and the Indian National Institute of Horticultural Research regarding the fields of plant physiology, molecular biology, genetics and applied horticultural science. The development of new programmes on plant virology, the genetic research of economically important plant species, and the expansion of current horticultural science training programmes were also discussed at the meeting.

(Press Office of the Ministry of Rural Development)