Date: 15/05/2023
Dear ISWS colleagues
Greetings!!!.
I sincerely thank to all the esteemed members of the Indian Society of Weed Science (ISWS) for the opportunity to serve as the president of the Society for 2023-2025. It’s my immense pleasure to welcome on board our newly elected EC members, Dr. M.K. Singh (Varanasi) and Dr. Anil Dixit (Raipur) as Vice-Presidents; Dr. R.P. Dubey (Jabalpur) as Secretary; Dr. D. Subramanyam (Guntur) and Dr. S.P. Singh (Pantnagar) as Jt. Secretaries, and Dr. P.K. Mukharjee (Jabalpur) as Treasurer. They all are learned weed scientists. The Society will require their experience in future decisions related to scientific, administrative and policy matters. The Society have entrusted a big responsibility on us and we assure you that the new team will further accelerate the momentum generated in the past. We are an organization of volunteers and everyone’s contributions are critical for our Society’s success. It is our members that make the ISWS successful. It will be my great honour and pleasure to serve you the next two years along with the new EC members.
Despite the restrictions caused by the COVID 19 pandemic for the last two years, the information flow and other necessary activities were ensured continuously by the Society through organizing meetings, trainings, webinars (virtually), international conference, elections, etc. The 3rd International Conference on Weeds organized by the ISWS in December 2022 at the AAU, Anand was well appreciated. Our past EC (Dr. Sushil Kumar, President; Dr. T.K. Das and Dr. C.R. Chinnamuthu, Vice Presidents; Dr. J.S. Mishra, Secretary; Dr. Mukesh Kumar and Dr. Murali Arthanari, Joint Secretaries; Dr. V.K. Choudhary, Treasurer and Dr A.N. Rao, Editor-in-Chief, IJWS deserves special thanks for their hard work and professional leadership. I wish them the very best.
After taking over the charge on 15th May 2023, the first meeting of the newly elected EC was held at the Directorate of Weed Research, Jabalpur on16th May, 2023. While appreciating and acknowledging the all good works done by the outgoing EC, the present EC discussed in detail about the new challenges before us such as inclusion of weed science course in UG programme of the state agricultural universities, sensitizing and strengthening Councillors for organizing regular programmes for the various stakeholders of the region and increasing the number of ISWS life members, attracting foreign scientists/students to become member of the Society, increasing the NAAS rating of the IJWS, inclusion of the journal in the UGC care list, revision of score card and online system for ISWS awards, provision of ISWS fellowship for Ph.D. students, finalization of venue for the next biennial conference, etc. to make the Society activities more visible and transparent, and strategies for way forward. The Society has to play a major role in policy issues of the Government when it comes for the use/restrictions of herbicides in agriculture. So far the herbicides are not included in the list of pesticides allowed to be sprayed by drone in India due to lack of sufficient research data on its efficacy, drifts, crop safety, environmental impacts, etc. The weed scientists and the herbicide industries have to play a major role in this direction. We as a weed scientist have to generate enough data on various aspects of herbicide as per the requirement of CIB & RC, so that the herbicides are also permitted, and the benefits of this technology could be harnessed by the Indian farmers and other stakeholders. Dr. A.N. Rao, has been unanimously re-elected as the Editor-in-Chief of the IJWS. We are confident that under his editorship, the quality of the journal, its overall visibility and NAAS rating will be improved further.
As we move forward, the weed science discipline may be shaped in future by new ideas and technologies along with new challenges. We hope that the Society will address the emerging challenges and become a reference point for the weed scientists, students, farmers, policy makers and beyond. Please do not hesitate to reach out to us, if you have questions/ suggestions.
JS Mishra
President, ISWS