The Department of Economics organized a study tour on 10^th December, 2015 at Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute (BARI), Gazipur.  The day long program mainly focused on familiarizing the students of department of Economics with various development of the agricultural research in Bangladesh. BARI is the largest multi- crop research institute conducting research on a wide variety of crops, such as cereals, tubers, pulses, oilseeds, vegetables, fruits, spices, flowers, etc. Besides variety development, this institute carries out research on such areas as soil and crop management, disease and insect management, water management and irrigation, development of farm machinery, improvement of cropping and farming system management, post-harvest handling and processing, and socio-economic studies related to production, processing, marketing and consumption.

On arrival at the location, an official from the Training and Communication Department of BARI, welcomed the students and gave a brief presentation on the history, activities and research projects of BARI. After that the students and the faculty members visited three divisions of the institute:

1. The Bio-technology division is involved in creating tissue culture, molecular genetics and genetic engineering research in crop plants.

1. Hydroponic Culture division which is a subset of hydroculture and is a method of growing plants using mineral nutrient solutions, in water, without soil.
2. The Seed technology division that provided an idea regarding genetically modified plants.

The students of Department of Economics as well as the faculty members acquired a lot of knowledge regarding different aspects of agricultural progress in Bangladesh on the study tour at BARI. The tour was led by Mr. Md. Shawkat Ali (Head, Department of Economics), Mr. Rezwanul Hasan Rana, Mr. Rubayyat Hashmi, Mr. Rezwanul Haque and Ms. Kashfi Rayan.

The Department of Economics expresses its heartfelt gratitude to AIUB management for their generous support to make this tour successful.