Introduction

Agriculture and biological sciences are forecasted to be the sciences of the 21st century. The intrinsic variability of agricultural systems means that statistical methods need to play a leading role in interpreting the massive quantities of data being generated in the search for the secrets of agricultural productivity while simultaneously ensuring the sustainability of natural environment.

It is universally known that the science of statistics and computer applications are an integrated component of agricultural research.  This importance of statistics in different areas of research specializations has led to corresponding increase in the number and diversity of available statistical procedures.  In agricultural research, there are different statistical techniques for crop and animal research, for laboratory and field experiments, for genetic and biotechnological research and so on.  This diversity necessitates the availability of appropriate statistical techniques for divergent research problems.  Further due to availability of large number of statistical techniques the difficulty of identifying the best technique to a specific experiment is really a challenging problem.  Obviously, this difficulty increases as more and more statistical procedures are developed.

Choosing the correct statistical procedure for a given experiment is based on expertise in statistics and in the subject matter of the experiment.  Thorough knowledge of only one of the two is not enough. Such a choice, therefore, should be made by a subject matter specialist with some training in experimental statistics or a statistician with some background and experience in the subject matter of the experiments or the joint efforts and cooperation of the statistician and subject matter specialists. Thus, for enhancing the quality of the agricultural research it is essential that in most of the agricultural research institutions the availability of high end statistical packages should be given top priority. With the availability of only small number of statisticians and that too handicapped with non-availability of desired software packages affects adversely on the quality of agricultural research. It is, therefore, pertinent that high end computing facilities are made available to the scientists of NARS so as to strengthen the computing environment that would help the statisticians to reach the agricultural scientists speedily and to provide these agricultural scientists with statistical support that would help them enhance the quality of agricultural research. This project is a big effort in this direction. The major aim of this initiative is to provide the scientists working in NARS with strong and high end statistical computing facilities and capacity building in the- use of general purpose statistical package. 

Saturday, March 13, 2010         IASRI, Library Avenue, PUSA, New Delhi - 110 012 (INDIA)      

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