University of Agriculture Faisalabad

Overview

University of Agriculture Faisalabad

University of Agriculture Faisalabad (UAF) is a public land-grant research university situated in Faisalabad, Pakistan. It was first established under the name Punjab Agricultural College and Research Institute in 1906 and became the first major institution of higher agricultural education in the region of Punjab. Currently, the university is considered the oldest and pioneer agriculture institute in South Asia.

University of Agriculture Faisalabad Key Statistics

UAF's educational infrastructure is composed of seven faculties such as the Faculty of Agricultural Engineering and Technology, Faculty of Animal Husbandry, Faculty of Food, Nutrition, and Home Sciences, and the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine. The programs offered by the university are mostly focused on life science and agricultural science, with their program in veterinary medicine considered as one of the best in the country.

The university is home to approximately 29,000 students enrolled in various undergraduate, postgraduate, and doctorate programs. A number of UAF's alumni have achieved notability in their chosen fields such as agricultural scientist Iqrar Ahmad Khan, biologist Muhammad Subhan Qureshi, and agricultural engineer Ashraf Choudhary.

Moreover, University of Agriculture Faisalabad has a main campus in the city of Faisalabad and two sub-campuses in Burewala Vehari and Toba Tek Singh with several academic and non-academic buildings. One of the buildings includes a library that holds a vast collection of materials including 27,101 manuscripts and 57,552 volumes of national and international research journals.

Other University of Agriculture Faisalabad key statistics worth noting include its Zoology Museum and the UAF Art Gallery. It also has several hostels that can accommodate nearly 15,000 students.

University of Agriculture Faisalabad Research

Research has made the university one of the top five educational institutions in Pakistan. Annually, UAF receives numerous grants and endowments from various local and international organizations which it uses to conduct research including to develop modern techniques in agriculture to be shared with the community.

Its top disciplines include biology, chemistry, and agronomy. Furthermore, the researchers at UAF are frequent participants in several conferences and symposia such as FedCSIS: Federated Conference on Computer Science and Information Systems, GLOBECOM: Global Communications Conference, and NSDR: ACM workshop on Networked Systems for Developing Regions.

The most cited University of Agriculture Faisalabad research publication is Ashraf and Foolad's (2007) "Roles of glycine betaine and proline in improving plant abiotic stress resistance" with 4,418 citations to date. The paper discusses two major organic osmolytes and their roles in plant osmotolerance. It is published in the Environmental and Experimental Botany.

At the same time, their second most cited research paper is Szkudelski's (2001) "The mechanism of alloxan and streptozotocin action in B cells of the rat pancreas." It has been cited 4,163 times by students and researchers around the world and is published in Physiological Research.

On the other hand, Farooq et al.'s (2009) "Plant drought stress: effects, mechanisms and management" is the third most cited UAF research publication. It has garnered 3,884 citations and is published in the Agronomy for Sustainable Development.

In addition, the university has several research centers and institutes such as the Punjab Bioenergy Institute, the Institute of Microbiology, and the Institute of Animal and Dairy Sciences.