Summary:
Under this, the students will be taught how to identity plants and animals, they will be given knowledge of endangered and threatened plants, they will be shared information regarding illegal trade of plants and animals and they will also be taught how to make people’s biodiversity register,” said Dr P S Nagar, who along with Dr Dharmendra Shah is coordinator of the programme.Professor G Sandhya Kiran from Department of Botany and professor Pradeep Mankodi from the Department of Zoology are directors of the course.So far, only Punjab University has offered the course on parataxonomy to students but the course offered there was purely based on botany. Vadodara: MS University on Friday launched a first of its kind certificate course in parataxonomy as part of green skill development programme (GSDP) funded by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, New Delhi.Supported by the Gujarat Ecology Commission (GEC), the Department of Botany and Department of Zoology of MSU’s Faculty of Science are associated partners for running this course which was launched with the first batch of 20 selected students.GEC which has been selected as environmental information systems (ENVIS) hub for Gujarat for the central scheme, has selected MSU for offering the advance course on parataxonomy.Interestingly, the 520 hours long course, is being offered free of cost to the students, who will pursue their entire studies in open class theatre – at the arboretum cum medicinal plant garden located at the university campus so that they remain close to the nature and understand the diversity around them.In a bid to provide employable skills to youth in environment sectors, the environment ministry has put into motion a plan to train 5.6 lakh youth between 2018-2019 and 2020-21 through GSDP.The ministry has proposed to train an estimated 80,000 people under various skill courses with parataxonomy being one such course.“We will be implementing this programme in the next four months..