Agricultural and Food Engineering

Considering the importance of agriculture in ensuring food and nutritional security, Agricultural Engineering Department had been incepted at Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur in 1952 according to the recommendation of the Dhar Committee appointed by the Board of Governors. Subsequently, with the upgradation of its academic programmes, the Department was renamed as "Agricultural and Food Engineering Department" in 1994. Among 23 IITs, IIT Kharagpur has the sole distinction of having an Agricultural and Food Engineering Department, which is comprised of six disciplines viz., Farm Machinery and Power, Land and Water Resources Engineering, Food Process Engineering, Agricultural Biotechnology, Aquacultural Engineering, and Agricultural Systems & Management.Since its inception, the Department has pioneered Agricultural Engineering education and research in the country. It houses “CoE in Precision Agriculture & Food Nutrition”, “Agri-business Incubation Foundation IIT Kharagpur”, and “A. C. Pandya Students’ Activity  Centre”.Sponsored research projects and development activities deal with Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM), Soil Conservation, Irrigation and Drainage, Integrating Remote Sensing Data with Distributed Hydrological Models, IoT and AI/ML applications for Water Management, Soil Tillage, Climate-Resilient Agriculture, Utilisation of Fly ash, Ergonomic Database for Agricultural Equipment, Renewable Energy, Robotics and AI in Agricultural Machinery, Food Processing Technologies, Rice Fortification, Grain Storage Structure Design, Hydroponics, Application of Emerging Technologies in Aquaculture, Model Pilot Plant and facilities for production of industrial enzymes, etc. The Department has filed several patent applications and transferred many technologies to the industries and various stakeholders based on its innovative research. Read less