Introduction

Agriculture is a crucial sector of the Indian economy, with India holding the second largest cultivable-land in the world. Its economic contribution to India's GDP has fallen with the country's broad based growth, but still remains a key sector for livelihood security for more than 50% of the population. India is the second largest producer of rice, wheat, cotton, sugarcane, farm fish, sheep and goat meat, fruit, vegetables and tea and is a large producer of dry fruits and agriculture based raw material (for textiles in particular for the industry peoples). After the success of green, white, blue, and yellow revolutions, there is a need of evergreen revolution in agriculture to meet the growing demand of India's burgeoning population. There are several major challenges to meet the demand of food and nutritional security by 2050, which not only include production quantity, but also quality. Soil health and quality (salinity/alkalinity), erratic rainfall (intensity and timing), increased problems of insect-pests and weeds, non-judicious use of chemical pesticides (pest-resistance), climate change (biotic & abiotic stresses), fragmentation of land holding, wasteland management, lack of mechanization, poor seed replacement, monoculture & diminished interest of youth towards adopting agriculture as a profession.
The education is fundamental to all-round socio-economic development. Skills and knowledge are the driving forces of economic growth and social development of any country. Countries and societies with the higher and better level of skills adjust more effectively to the challenges and capture opportunities in a globally interconnected world. In India, the past decade has witnessed decrease in number of work force involved in agriculture and numbers of farmers have fallen behind the number of agriculture labourers. There is a great demand-supply mismatch in India and there is need for more skilled workforce for the expanding agricultural sectors.

There are now 75 agricultural universities (AU's) in India, which are imparting higher education in diverse fields of agriculture. However, there is a challenge to strengthen and streamlining of higher agricultural education system to enhance the quality of human resources in agri-supply chain to meet future challenges of market driven agriculture. This necessitates the grass-roots changes in regular planning, development, coordination, skill development, entrepreneurship, and quality improvement in teaching and doubling farmers' income as per the vision of Indian Prime Minister.

The State of Haryana has contributed significantly and revolutionized agriculture in India; however, over the time several issues are adversely affecting sustainable productivity, quality, entrepreneurship, attracting brilliant students and their retention, falling behind in the technology revolution and innovative teaching tools with accomplished teachers. There is a great need to address these issues by modifying course structure and curriculum with better exposure of students and faculty, cutting edge research/technology to double the income of Indian farmers, promoting entrepreneurship, and maintaining environmental sustainability.