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Dr. Aman Ullah Malik's Profile

A horticulturist by education with 25 years of experience in teaching, research and extension, my overall aim is to help improve the industry performance/ profitability and making it globally competitive. I am currently working as Professor Horticulture and Director, Institute of Horticultural Sciences, University of Agriculture, Faisalabad, and as Manager USAID/UC Davis Agriculture Innovation Program. I have previously completed several international and nationally funded projects and actively engaged in industry focused research and development (R&D) and capacity building activities. My R&D and outreach approach is to develop need-based technologies by using industry prioritized R&D projects for training of postgraduate students and to develop recommendations. This provides R&D based solutions along with technically trained human resources, for the local industry, to help build its capacity and improve performance.

Previously, I completed a PhD from Curtin University, Australia, by winning the International Postgraduate Research Scholarship. I also successfully, completed post-doc research at the University of California, Davis on a Fulbright award. My work includes over 100 research publications, and presentations at several conferences, including in Australia, Canada, U.S., China, Malaysia, South Africa, Thailand, Turkey, and Pakistan. I received the Best Teacher Award (2006) from the Prime Minister of Pakistan in the Higher Education category and have been a consistent recipient of the Research Productivity Award at the national level. I’m a member of various national and international committees and agricultural policy/ public private partnership working groups.

Abstract

Agents of Change: An Opportunity Which Transformed an Industry

Opportunity for higher education in an advanced country has been very rewarding in the personal and professional development of many individuals, but it also sometimes transforms the local industry. This is also the case with the mango industry of Pakistan. After being awarded the International Postgraduate Research Scholarship to complete PhD, in Australia, I returned to Pakistan in 2004, with a dream to establish a modern postharvest lab and provide training opportunities in postharvest supply chain to make the local industry globally competitive. While there was no money at hand, I had a clear vision and a dream like the saying of the great Martin Luther King Jr, which provided basis for future developments. We started developing collaborations with the public and private sector, motivating students to engage in quality scientific work, highlighting the need for developing postharvest science and technology at various forums, convincing stakeholders to work together for improving produce quality in supply chains, and hunting for resources for required research and development (R&D). Overtime, we were successful in establishing collaboration with ACIAR, Australia, PESP project Netherland, USAID, UNIDO, Higher Education Commission, Metro-Germany, Punjab Agricultural Research Board, and various local industries to work on fresh produce, especially in the mango industry. With these projects over the past 10 years, not only a modern postharvest lab was established at University but our postharvest group also produced 12 PhDs, more than 50 Master’s students, and thousands of stakeholders were trained. We successfully developed and commercially tested controlled atmosphere technology for shipping mangoes (Sindhri variety) by sea to Europe with overall postharvest life of 40 days. Together with other developments like USAID co-funded on-farm infrastructure, these R&D and capacity building efforts helped transform the local mango industry from a traditional, with poor quality and high losses, to some most modern industries with new generation of farmer exporters, linked to high end markets and doing business successfully.