Uttar Banga Krishi Vishwavidyalaya

Uttar Banga Krishi Vishwavidyalaya
উত্তর বঙ্গ কৃষি বিশ্ববিদ্যালয়

File:Ubkv.jpg
Motto	Where wisdom is free
Type	Public
Established	February 1, 2001
Chancellor	Governor of West Bengal
Vice-Chancellor	Prof. (Dr.) Biswanath Bandyopadhyay
Undergraduates	B.Tech (Agricultural Engineering), B.Sc (Agriculture), B.Sc (Horticulture)
Location	Pundibari, Cooch Behar , West Bengal , India
Campus	Rural
Affiliations	UGC, AICTE, ICAR
Website	www.ubkv.ac.in

Uttar Banga Krishi Vishwavidyalaya, translated in English as North Bengal Agricultural University, is an agricultural university situated at Pundibari about 15 km northwest of Cooch Behar, West Bengal, India. The university has faculties of horticulture, agriculture and agricultural engineering.

The northern part of West Bengal is endowed with diverse natural resources like forest, economic plant resources, agro-ecosystem, etc., together with extremely responsive rural communities. It comprises old alluvial, terai and hill zones distributed in six northern districts of West Bengal viz., Cooch Behar, Jalpaiguri, Darjeeling, Malda, Dakshin Dinajpur and Uttar Dinajpur. The economy of this part of West Bengal is predominantly agrarian in nature, and agriculture is characterised by low productivity and subsistence farming with a limited number of crops due to inherent soil-climatic and agro-ecological conditions. Thus generations of improved technologies befitting the agro-climatic and socio-economic characteristics of this region is an important issue.

Keeping this perspective in view, the state government established a satellite campus of the State Agriculture University, Bidhan Chandra Krishi Viswavidyalaya at Pundibari, in Cooch Behar district in 1979. Since then the Indian Council of Agricultural Research has accredited the campus and started extending development support. A notable change in agricultural and horticultural crop production, productivity and cropping pattern in North Bengal became perceptible from the late 1980s onwards.

Despite inadequate manpower and infrastructural facilities, the research, extension and teaching activities at North Bengal campus were noteworthy. During the late 1990s a postgraduate programme was also started. With the introduction of the National Agricultural Research Project (NARP), Pundibari became the headquarters of the Terai-agro climatic zone of West Bengal. Since then specific problems in the region have been taken care of by the campus, and new technologies have been generated through various research programmes.

However, all of this was still meager, with respect to the desire and need of the farmers. Later, the State Government strengthened this satellite campus of Bidhan Chandra Krishi Viswavidyalaya further, and ultimately decided to upgrade the campus to a full-fledged State Agricultural University in July 2000, covering all of North Bengal. The Uttar Banga Krishi Viswavidyalaya was established by West Bengal Act XX of 2000 and started functioning on 1 February 2001.