Faculty of Horticulture Cluj-Napoca: Celebrating 35 Years of Horticulture Higher Education

Although the Faculty of Horticulture from Cluj-Napoca was founded in 1977, the higher education in horticulture has a long and important tradition and history in Transylvania, Romania. It started in 1869, when the Agricultural Institute Cluj, Manastur (today, University of Agricultural Sciences and Veterinary Medicine, Cluj-Napoca), one of the oldest higher education life sciences centres from East-Central Europe, was created. This ‘Agronomy Academia’ was established due to the efforts of the Transylvanian Agricultural Association and the Status Romano-Catholicus Transylvaniensis, which rented to the Ministry of Agriculture 400 ha of land and the buildings of an old Benedictine monastery near a city that can track its routes back into the Roman Empire. For more than 140 years, the efforts and the predecessors contribution have been creating an important higher education and research institution. In 2012, to celebrate 35 years of excellence, the Faculty Council organised a special event in ‘Aula Magna’ of the University, in November the 29th, 2012. It brought together special guests from partner institutions, forebears of the faculty, academic staff, students, graduates and members of the horticultural business, sustaining the Faculty’s new mission of being a catalyst for the horticulture education and research. On this occasion, the prestigious honorific title of Doctor Honoris Causa was granted for two academic personalities, related to the faculty: Jaime Prohens, from the Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain, and Ioan Vasile Abrudan, rector of the ‘Transylvania’ University from Brasov, Romania.