ICAHCFS 2026 Dehradun: Fees, Deadlines and the 70+ Awards You Can Apply For

If you have a paper sitting unpublished, or a thesis nobody outside your department has read, there is a conference in Dehradun in the first week of September with your name on it — but the paperwork closes first, and one of the dates has already nearly gone.

The 15th International Conference on Agriculture, Horticulture and Forestry: Innovations for Climate-Resilient Cropping Systems (ICAHCFS-2026) runs 1, 2 and 3 September 2026 at Dehradun, in hybrid mode — you can present from where you are.

The dates that matter are these:

• 25 August 2026 — last date to register and nominate for awards in offline mode
• 30 August 2026 — last date for abstract submission and for book chapter submission
• 31 August 2026 — last date to register and nominate for awards in online mode

It is jointly organised by SGRR University, Dehradun — whose School of Agricultural Sciences is ICAR-NAEAB accredited — and the SABSR Society, New Delhi, in association with VCSG Uttarakhand University of Horticulture and Forestry, Bharsar and ICAR-IISWC, Dehradun, with the National Medicinal Plants Board (Ministry of AYUSH) and UCOST, Dehradun.

For a research scholar the case is fairly concrete.

Somewhere to publish. The organisers list NAAS-rated and Scopus-indexed journal publication, and a book chapter route alongside the conference proceedings. For anyone whose confirmation seminar or promotion file needs a line, that is the point of the trip.

Awards you can actually apply for. More than seventy, and they are not all lifetime honours for professors — a good many are aimed squarely at students and early-career researchers.

You do not have to travel. Hybrid mode covers poster sessions too, so a scholar in Coimbatore or Jorhat can present without three days of trains.

A room full of the people who review you. Keynotes, plenaries and technical sessions chaired by ICAR and state agricultural university faculty. The poster session is where a second-year student meets the external examiner they will face in three years.

Be clear-eyed about what it is, though. This is a large multidisciplinary conference with a very wide theme list — everything from forest genetic resources to textile science sits under one banner. That breadth is a strength if you want an audience and a publication; it is not the same thing as a narrow specialist meeting where every paper in the room is on your topic.

The theme itself is not decoration. Horticulture now out-produces foodgrain by volume in India — the production numbers have been saying so for years — and climate resilience in cropping systems is where most of the funded work sits.

They are two different links, and applying for an award does not register you by itself — the organisers confirm the nomination by email first, and the award fee is paid after that.

Register & applyBoth forms are open nowOffline mode closes 25 August, online mode 31 August. Nomination is confirmed by email before any award fee is due.Register for the conferenceApply for an award

Payment is made first — by net banking, bank app or branch — and the registration form is then submitted with the payment slip or screenshot attached. Nothing needs to be posted. A confirmation email carries the schedule and, for online delegates, the meeting link.

Registration fees are non-refundable and non-transferable, and no abstract is published without a registration behind it.

Fees run by category and by how you attend. Registering online is cheaper than offline in every band, and turning up on the day is dearest.

The fee covers access to the sessions and the conference materials.

Two costs sit outside that. A book chapter carries a processing fee of ₹1,499 per chapter, payable after acceptance. And the award fee is ₹5,999 — which, importantly, includes the conference registration fee rather than sitting on top of it.

The award list runs to two pages of the brochure and splits into two kinds.

Open nominations. Roughly forty by discipline and career stage — Best M.Sc. Thesis, Outstanding Ph.D. Thesis, Young Researcher, Best Research Scholar, Student of the Year, and a long run of subject awards including Best Horticulturist, Best Floriculturist, Best Olericulturist, Emerging Horticulturist, Best Soil Scientist, Best Plant Pathologist, Best Seed Scientist, Best Agri-Engineer, Best Agrometeorologist and Young Agri Economist. There is also an Excellence in Protected Cultivation award, which is worth knowing about if you work in polyhouse systems.

Named memorial awards. A second set carrying the names of figures in Indian agricultural science — among them Dr M.S. Swaminathan, Dr N.E. Borlaug, Dr B.P. Pal for plant breeding, Dr Rattan Lal for soil science and Sir Dietrich Brandis for forestry.

And two that need no application at all. Best Oral Presentation and Best Poster Presentation are awarded in each session, decided by that session's chairman during the conference. If you are presenting anyway, you are already in the running for those — no form, no fee.

The specifications are precise, and getting them wrong is an avoidable way to be sent back.

Abstract — English, MS Word, Times New Roman, single spaced. Title 14pt bold, body text 12pt, not more than 350 words. It must carry the paper title, all authors with affiliation and email, and the presenting author's name underlined. Abstracts go to abstract.dehradunconference@gmail.com by 30 August.

Oral presentation — 8 to 10 minutes, no more than 15 slides, handed to the session convener beforehand. Selected from among the accepted abstracts.

Poster — 4 ft × 3 ft, and hybrid presentation is allowed. Title 86pt, authors 50pt, subheadings 36pt, body 24pt, captions 18pt, structured title through to conclusion. The organisers ask for clear figures and short tables rather than dense text, which is good advice for any poster.

Lead paper — 15 to 20 minutes with discussion, plus a 3 to 4 page extended summary for the proceedings.

Conference brochureICAHCFS-2026, the full 24-page brochureThemes, the complete award list, fees, presentation specifications and accommodation. Large file — worth downloading on wi-fi.Download the brochurePDF · 19 MB

None of this is specific to ICAHCFS-2026 — it is what anyone should do before sending money to any academic event.

Confirm the fee and the deadline on the organiser's own channel before you pay, not from a forwarded image. Dates on circulating posters go stale, and this guide is dated too.

Pay only through the link on the official registration form. We have deliberately not reprinted the payment handle from the brochure: a UPI ID lifted from a news page is exactly what a lookalike site would quote at you.

Keep the payment slip. The registration form asks you to attach it, and the fee is non-refundable and non-transferable.

Check what your own institution will reimburse, and whether it needs the receipt in a particular name, before rather than after.

For queries the organisers list Dr Sushila, +91 62843 33915.

If you are planning the season's travel more broadly, the same practical questions apply to the trade fairs: Agri Asia at Gandhinagar and Bharat Agri Tech at Indore are the two we have covered — a conference sells you a publication, a fair sells you a machine, and both are worth the trip only when you arrive with something specific in mind.