The Governor of Maharashtra and Chancellor of public Universities of Maharashtra state Bhagat Singh Koshyari today appointed Dr. Indra Mani as vice chancellor of the Vasantrao Naik Marathwada Krishi Vidyapeeth (VNMKV), Parbhani. 

Prof. Indra Mani is currently serving as Joint Director Research at prestigious Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi. Prof. Indra Mani, with more than 29 years of service has extensively worked in the area of machinery development for agi-residue management, dryland agriculture, vegetable mechanization, small farm mechanization, and equipment for enhancing fertilizer use efficiency. The technologies developed and upscaled by him have reached to more than 18 states of country and have created a great socio-economic impact by making agriculture a profitable venture through production in dry land areas, enhanced fertilizer use efficiency, biomass management, production of quality compost and mechanization of small farms. In addition, he has guided 20 Ph.D. and 12 M.Tech. thesis on different aspects of agricultural mechanization for benefit of Indian farmers. He has published more than 140 research papers and other publications in peer reviewed national and international journals.

 He has established Design Innovation Centre in collaboration with Indian Institute of Technology for developing innovative solutions for Indian farmers. He has been actively involved in formulation of Mechanization strategy for various regions of the country particularly North Eastern region. He has been coordinator of IARI’s NEH, TSP and MGMG programme for improving the livelihood of farmers in north eastern hill region and tribal areas along with areas in states of Uttar Pradesh, Haryana and Delhi. Under his guidance as Nodal Officer Mera Gaon Mera Gaurav, 121 teams involving about 600 scientists of ICAR-IARI and ICAR-IASRI are working for livelihood improvement of about 400 villages adopted under the Programme.

Dr. Indra Mani has been at the forefront in advocating and developing different farmer centric mechanization strategies. He has been instrumental in development of agricultural drone policy of India by serving as convener of the committee for developing standard guidelines for the use of drones in agriculture and Chairman of the committee to explore the possibilities and requirements of drone technology for Soil Nutrients application and drafting of Standard Operational Guidelines. He has been actively involved in mentoring of Incubatees  and Start-ups related  farm technology under RKVY-RAFTAAR(MoA&FW, GoI) and ZTM&BPD (ICAR-IARI) and ARISE programme of ICAR-IARI. He has been actively involved in TIFAN (Technology Innovation Forum for Agricultural Nurturing)- a platform to solve real mechanization challenges.

Prof Mani has been bestowed a number of awards like ICAR -Bharat Ratna C. Subramaniam Outstanding Teacher award, ASABE(USA) Presidential Citation award, ICFA Apollo tyres award, MoWR ground water augmentation award, ICAR-Jawahar Lal Nehru award, IARI best teacher award, Institution of Engineers Gold medal, ASPEE award, ISAE fellowship, IE(I) fellowship, ISAE team award and ISAE outstanding book award. Dr Indra Mani has a very wide international exposure and has been visiting faculty to different centres/institutes in different countries in South East Asia, North America, Africa, Japan and Europe. He has made remarkable contribution in developing Industry -Institution – farmers -innovators linkage.