Agriculture is an art of living with nature and also a technology which unifies the living and non living world. Furthermore, the efficiency of each production unit either domestic animals or crops has been enhanced through the use of technology to control and regulate a small limited part of nature. Technological innovations in Agriculture, resulting in higher productivity have been emulated worldwide. Proper understanding of the weather and climate, land and soil, crop and cropping systems, agronomy of crop production, pest and disease management etc., have generated enormous technologies, which have been passed from generation to generation. At the same time, modern science has created a number of technologies, which could make an impact on agricultural productivity. As Agriculture remains a strong sector in Sri Lankan economy, exploitation of advances in technology and biology is of particular importance.
Despite a lot of research findings on crop production is available; application of those findings for agricultural development is still lacking, mainly due to lack of skilled human resources. Therefore, skill development in crop production technology should be given priority in agricultural education, not only to the secondary education but also up to the postgraduate education. In the proposed postgraduate program of crop production technology envisage provision of technological knowhow to students, commencing from crop environment, agronomic aspects of planting to harvesting, technological aspects of crop production and post-harvest processing up to the marketing.
