Dr. Muhammad Ashraf is an agricultural engineer, currentlyserving his second stintas chairman of PCRWR. He is graduated from the University of Agriculture, Faisalabad in Agri. Engg andearned his PhD from University of Newcastle, UK and has served a 22-year long career in R&D of water resource management. He has more than 27 years of research experience and has over 80 research publications to his credit, carried in both national and international journals of repute.
He has research experience in water resources development and management in arid and semi-arid areas. he worked for the integrated management of water resources, particularly surface and groundwater resources in the irrigated and dry (rain fed) areas. He worked specifically on irrigation system design and improvement, resource conservation technologies, soil and water conservation, high efficiency irrigation systems, skimming wells, hydro-salinity, groundwater assessment, conjunctive use of surface and groundwater, irrigation scheduling, crop water requirements, land and water productivity, rainwater harvesting, supplemental irrigation, groundwater recharge, soil erosion, watershed management, waste water management etc.
He has vast experience of project planning, processing, presentation, dissemination, capacity building, monitoring and evaluation. He has been collaborating with national and international agencies such as United States Geological Survey (USGS), Agriculture Research Services (ARS), United Nations Children Fund (UNESCO) and United Nations Development Program etc on various water-related issues and organized a number of national and international workshops/seminars.He has been working for provincial and national organizations such as On Farm Water Management (OFWM) Punjab and Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources (PCRWR). He has the opportunity to work for international organizations such as International Water Management Institute (IWMI) and International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA). He is the Editor of the journal Paddy and Water Environment.