To provide agricultural education and research, the Institute of Agricultural Science was established under the University of Calcutta. It was founded by Professor Pabitra Kumar Sen, who was the Khaira Professor of Agriculture (another endowment chair) in the early 1950s. Initial efforts began as early as 1913, but the first institute was set up only in 1939 at Barrackpore (a city near Kolkata) by the university, following the establishment of Imperial Council of Agricultural Research (now known as Indian Council of Agricultural Research) in 1926. Although it was shut down in 1941 due to World War II. Then, in 1954, a postgraduate department in agriculture was started in Ballygunge Science College by the university, with agricultural botany as the only subject and two years later, Veterinary Science Institute of the university was included and the department was upgraded into a faculty called agriculture and veterinary science. In 2002 university decided to reopen undergraduate agriculture course in the agricultural experiment farm campus at Baruipur, a city in the south of Calcutta. In the same year, the department was restructured as a separate Institute of Agricultural Science.