Onlykashmir.in News Desk
Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology of Kashmir has launched a three-day training programme on drone technology and data capturing for natural resource management at its Faculty of Forestry in Benhama, Ganderbal, giving undergraduate students hands-on exposure to one of agriculture’s fastest-growing technological tools.
Organised in collaboration with the Erasmus+ funded ENTER Project, the training aims to equip students with both theoretical grounding and practical skills in drone-based applications relevant to forestry and allied natural resource sectors. The programme’s design reflects a broader shift within agricultural universities toward integrating precision technologies into standard curricula, recognising that emerging graduates will increasingly need familiarity with aerial data-capture tools to remain competitive in research and field roles.
Inaugurating the training, Dean of the Faculty of Forestry, Prof. A.H. Mughal, highlighted the expanding role drones now play across forestry, precision agriculture, disaster assessment and environmental monitoring. He noted that such technologies allow for faster, more accurate surveys of forest cover, crop health and terrain, tasks that previously required extensive manual fieldwork, and said the university intends to build on this foundation with further specialised training in coming sessions.
The three-day programme combines classroom lectures with live drone demonstrations and structured hands-on sessions, allowing participating students to operate the equipment directly under expert supervision rather than relying solely on theoretical instruction. This blended format is aimed at ensuring that students leave with functional competence rather than conceptual familiarity alone.
The initiative comes at a time when drone-based monitoring is gaining traction across Jammu and Kashmir’s forestry and agriculture departments for tasks ranging from encroachment detection to crop damage assessment. By introducing these skills at the undergraduate level, SKUAST-K is positioning its forestry graduates to enter a workforce where such technical capability is increasingly considered a baseline requirement rather than a specialised add-on.
University officials said the collaboration with the Erasmus+ ENTER Project reflects SKUAST-K’s ongoing efforts to build international academic partnerships that bring global best practices in natural resource management directly into its classrooms and field stations in Kashmir.
