Why Nepal has poor quality agriculture research???????

Better agriculture growth reflects better agriculture research and better research reflects more scientific publications. Poor agriculture research and poor agriculture development goes together. Talking about Nepali agriculture research, it does not have significant impact on agriculture development. The main reasons behind not focusing and mainstreaming agriculture research are 1) Agriculture research is considered as just an employment platform, 2) People only work for job they do not do research and 3) Poor prioritization for agriculture research from government 

1) Agriculture research is just an employment platform

     Image: NARC 

Nepal Agricultural Research Council (NARC) is only the research organization of Nepal government. However, this organization is considered just an employment platform. Every year NARC open positions for scientists, officers and assistants, however, this is just an employment. These scientists and officers  have given role to work as a normal employee. Why government is not taking opportunity to grab their knowledge in agriculture research? Research is something more than just a employment, but the only agriculture research organization is not even prioritizing agriculture research.

In another hand, better research reflects more journal publications. Publishing some papers in journal indicate something new identified and proven. This information reflect in better agriculture practice based on the proven information.  However, we can not see more quality papers in international journals from NARC. Most of the papers are just screening papers are not published in relevant international journals.  We can see that many of scientist are not research oriented and not publication oriented. There are hardly few papers published based on real issue based research because research is considered as just an employment, which can reflect into poor agriculture development.

2) Why and how scientists are just employee?

Many scientists and officers are working in NARC and some other agriculture research organizations, however, there are not many quality research happening. It is because the position is just perceived as just an employee and just to work for something else. If we try to find ratio of scientist and research, the ratio is too high which mean there are far less research happening. Less research means low coverage of main issue and problem in farmers field, so how can we expect better agriculture development because the responsible research organizations are not covering real issues and problems. 

3) Poor prioritization for agriculture research 

Including Nepal government, non-government organizations and International non-governmental organizations are not particularly focusing in research. Most of the organizations are development and employment oriented. Agriculture research is not a main priority in federal budget even, in addition these non-government organizations are also mainly oriented in subsistence agriculture development. We can barely see publications from non-government organizations, which mean research is not a main priority for them. Federal budget is not covering well for essential agriculture research, so how can we expect better agriculture development in Nepal?

4) Where is quality research?

Quality research and better publication goes together, but where is our publication? Where they are publishing? We are just publishing screening and low quality papers in random journals.  It is happening because we do not have quality research. Low knowledge in specific subject matter, poor technical training, sophisticated laboratory and materials are main causing factors behind poor quality research. Poor quality research is also a result of poor motivation of employee to work in research. In most of the cases scientist are not motivated to work in research, they just treat their position as an employee.  Research are like a task to finish and submit a report, so people are careless on research, falsifying data and not caring on what they doing and how it impact. So, we do not have good research and good publication.  If we do not have quality research there is no chance to publish quality papers in reputed international journal. Because of not having quality research, our research is not spreading in international research community, our research are not seeing and observing by international community. Therefore, our research are not understood, non-reputed and considered as low level work.  Where is our quality research? When we going to understand the importance of quality research?