HIAL is working towards greening its 150-acre campus through native plantation. We are using a Japanese technique called Miyawaki to grow a forest on the University site. For this, we have identified the native vegetation of Ladakh and are sourcing the saplings from various places. We are also setting up a Nursery & a seed bank which will make us self-reliant in terms of Saplings & Seeds over the next 2 years. Thereafter, we are also working on documenting ‘Plants of Ladakh; in terms of propagation techniques and seed availability. With this, we will be able to utilize our learnings from this project to grow multiple forests across the Ladakh region.
Along with this, the School of Agriculture, which will be established in the next 2 years will be the main platform for all these projects such as valley greening, apple orchards and plant fencing. Post-harvest processing techniques will be researched for the native species which have commercialization scope.
The School of Agriculture will also be starting a fellowship in Sustainable Agriculture from April 2020. Sustainable agricultural techniques will be taught to students from all the mountainous regions of Hindu-Kush Himalayas so that we are able to broaden the scope of this school to cover the entire region, as well as research varied techniques which would be useful for this region.
