The professor and head of department of food science and technology of University of Georgia, USA, Dr. Rakesh Kumar Singh, had a collaborative meeting with professor Mr. DP Singh, the vice-chancellor of Banaras Hindu University (BHU), on November 9th, 2009 at Varanasi.

Dr. Rakesh Kumar Singh earlier paid a visit to the Center of Food, Science and Technology. He delivered a lecture to the students of the university then, briefing them up about the opportunities and prospects for higher education in the University of Georgia. He mainly stressed on the key research issues like post harvest technology, value addition in waste food commodities. In fact he pointed out the importance of water management and how it can be useful and effectively done if the research is also done on the areas of emerging food processing technologies. In that visit, he emphasized on the scope and opportunities in Food Science in the University of Georgia, USA.

That visit led to some progress with another meeting on 9th November, where both the parties discussed about the possible collaboration between the BHU and the University of Georgia in the area of food sciences. They also discusses how the staff and the students of both the universities can be united to promote scientific cooperation between the Banaras Hindu University and the University of Georgia in the area of food technology. There were other areas too that were broadly discussed for the mutual cooperation between the two. The areas were Nutraceuticals, food packaging, functional foods, value-added food products. The food safety was also discussed in the meeting.

The meeting witnessed the presence of the other high dignitaries like Professor SR Singh, Director of the Institute of Agricultural Sciences, the rector Professor Mr. BD Singh, Professor Mr. RP Singh, the Dean, and the Professor Mr. Alok Jha, coordinator of Food Science and Technology.