Acting as a think tank, will draw the road map for research Karnal, June 1 Faced with the challenge of breaking yield barriers and to cater to the needs to all sections of dairy farmers, the National Dairy Research Institute has taken a major initiative- to launch National Academy of Dairy Sciences-which would be its think tank. The academy would give advice on policy matters for growth of quality dairy farming education and research, act as a nucleus for promoting inter-institutional collaboration, facilitate conduct of national and international workshops and act as a forum for nomenclature of degrees. The initiative was taken at a national workshop held here to draw the road map for dairy farming education and research in India so as to make it more relevant to serve the needs of large and small milk-processing units and also include business management as part of the curriculum. Eminent scientists and policy-makers from all professional dairy education institutes in India, who participated, were in total agreement that that a graduate and postgraduate student in dairy farming must be equipped for serving the needs of large and small milk processing units and with business and marketing skills. Inaugurating the workshop, Dr RB Singh, former chairman, Agricultural Scientist Recruitment Board, New Delhi, said there were about 1 billion people in the world who went hungry and 40 per cent children in India were malnourished. In this presidential address, Dr AK Srivastava, director, NDRI, informed that the livestock sector contributed 28-30 per cent to the agricultural GDP and milk contributed 70 per cent to the livestock GDP. He expressed concern over the wage disparity in the dairy and non-dairy sector. The NDRI launched its new website (www.ndri.res.in.) which was inaugurated by Dr RB Singh, chairman, Agricultural Scientists Recruitment Board.