Vice Chancellor Dr. Fateh Marri, Provincial Secretary for Agriculture Kazi Aiyaz Mahesar, and Faculty Dean Dr. Altaf Ali Siyal performed the inauguration.

The Vice Chancellor and Secretary of Agriculture Sindh inaugurated the Faculty of Agricultural Engineering’s Geographical Information System and Remote Sensing Laboratory, which has been set up for climate change, irrigation systems, soil conditions, and disaster forecasting.

In order to forecast agricultural, climatic, irrigation, and soil conditions across the nation, including in Sindh Province, Sindh Agriculture University and the Department of Agriculture have established a cutting-edge Geographical Information System (GIS) and Remote Sensing Center in the university’s Faculty of Agricultural Engineering.

Vice Chancellor Dr. Fateh Marri, Provincial Secretary for Agriculture Kazi Aiyaz Mahesar, and Faculty Dean Dr. Altaf Ali Siyal performed the inauguration. A data centre will be created by SAU and the Department of Agriculture of Sindh (SAD) to track natural resources, agriculture, and irrigation as well as store data on floods, droughts, rainfall, and climate change.

Vice Chancellor Dr. Fateh Marri spoke at the opening ceremony and noted that since the country’s geographic data is only kept at HEC Islamabad and the sub-database unit is located at NED University Karachi, a data centre at the university level is urgently needed.

According to him, the Sindh government’s agricultural sector, agricultural researchers, and university students will benefit from this GIS laboratory. A team trained in this technology will be available, and as a result, the relevant organisations and meteorologists in the nation and particularly in Sindh will be able to forecast disasters and droughts.

Also being built at the university is a database centre. In order to increase production per acre, modern agriculture must be promoted, according to him, as there is still a lot of room for research in the field. In this situation, the Sindh government and agricultural institutions should collaborate on cutting-edge initiatives.

The establishment of a GIS laboratory and database centre, according to provincial secretary of agriculture Kazi Aiyaz Mahesar, will enable modern methods of crop reporting and monitoring of agricultural and climatic conditions.

During the most recent floods and rains, we had difficulty informing national and international organisations about agricultural and other losses because we lacked data that had been validated by modern methods.

The Department of Agriculture Sindh is partnering with the University of Agricultural Engineering to establish a GIS lab to promote agricultural research and increase the capacity of faculty members, students, and officials.

Dr. Altaf Ali Siyal, Dean Faculty of Agricultural Engineering, said that the university will offer courses in GIS systems and remote sensing to undergraduate and graduate students once the lab is established.

On this occasion, Dr. Farman Chandio, Dr. Irfan Shaikh, Dean Dr. Manzoor Ali Abro, Dean Dr. Syed Ghiyasuddin Shah Rashidi, Director General Agriculture Research Sindh Noor Muhammad Baloch, and a sizable number of teachers and students were present.