Thursday, March 2 2006 17:02 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: India and the US today(Mar 2,2006) reaffirmed their committment to jointly work towards taking forward the recently launched Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture, which among other things, aims at ushering in an 'Evergreen Revolution' in this subcontinent nation.

Reviewing the progress made in deepening the global partnership between the two countries since their Joint Statement of July 18, 2005, President George Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh agreed to expand cooperation in agriculture. The India-US Joint statement, released after the meeting of the two leaders today, said they have decided to work for economic prosperity and trade through cooperation in agriculture and intensifying efforts to develop a bilateral business climate supportive of trade and investment.

It said the India-US Knowledge initiative on agriculturehas been launched with a three year financial commitment to link "Our universities, technical institutions and business of both countries to support agriculture education, joint research and capacity building projects including in the area of biotechnology".

The understanding on the initiative reached between the Agriculture Ministry and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) led to the creation of the Board of the Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture (AKI), which after identifying areas of priority focus agreed on a Work Plan in certain areas.