Bhubaneswar, May 7: Girls have outsmarted their male counterparts to grab top scores in agriculture studies at the Orissa University of Agriculture and Technology.

Girls received almost 70 per cent of the total university medals at the 34th convocation ceremony of the institute held today.

Shiuli Chatterjee from the agriculture engineering programme alone received 11 gold medals and Archana Mohapatra of the veterinary science programme received eight medals. Speaking to The Telegraph Chatterjee said studying agriculture provided them a scope to diversify and it also offered better job prospects.

"We are very proud of the achievement of our girl students. The major reason why more women are taking up agriculture studies as a career option is because of the job security this field offers," said OUAT professor S.R. Das.

"Apart from the state government jobs, the students are being offered jobs in multinational seed and fertilizer companies and nationalised banks. Many students are opting for higher research and academics," Das said.

The varsity at present has 4,808 students out of which 2,337 (48.6 percent) are girls.

Vice-chancellor of the varsity Manoranjan Kar said the university had produced 17 high-yielding varieties of different crops in the past two years. The low land rice culture OR-142-99 has been released in Cambodia in the name of Santepheap-3 and a new variety called "Rambha" has been identified as an extremely suitable variety for shallow low lands of Myanmar, Kar said.

Chancellor of universities and governor S.C. Jamir and agriculture minister Pradeep Maharathy also spoke on the occasion and encouraged the students to continue working towards enhancing the production and productivity of various produce.