Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) which regulates UG Education (Agriculture, Horticulture, Fisheries etc) has mandated a course on Statistics which is essential to understand many subjects, in general, and Genetics and Breeding, in particular. Students and teachers depend on many publications, Indian and Foreign, during the course of study / teaching. Therefore, a book with contents conforming to the ICAR Syllabus has been long awaited.
This publication has been prepared keeping the ICAR Syllabus as the framework. In addition, examples from Agricultural Sciences are cited to explain the concepts and principles to facilitate both the teacher and the taught. The Chapters included are Classification, tabulation and diagrammatic and graphical representation of data, Measures of central tendency, Measures dispersion, Probability, Probability distributions, Sampling, Statistical inference, Tests of hypothesis, Correlation, Regression, Analysis of Variance and Design of experiments. Statistical tables (Z, t, χ² and F) are also provided as appendices to facilitate inference.
Each of the Chapters has “Study questions” with both objective and subjective questions which is a unique feature of this publication. However, the questions listed are not exhaustive and the teacher can develop many more contained only by imagination.
It is hoped that this publication will be received well by all those related to the subject of “Statistics”, in general and students of State Agricultural Universities, in particular.

R. Ganesan is an Associate Professor of Statistics at the Department of Animal Genetics and Breeding, Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Veterinary Education and Research (RIVER), Puducherry. He obtained his Masters degree in Statistics from Madras University and is due to submit his Ph.D. Thesis to Pondicherry University. His area of interest includes applied statistics particularly biostatistics and statistical modeling. Prior to joining RIVER, the author has worked for National Institute of Epidemiology (ICMR) for 7 years. The author has a total experience of 27 years in teaching and research and a significant number of publications in national/international journals to his credit. Dr. P.V. Sreenivasaiah, M.V.Sc., Ph.D., FNAVS is working as Professor and Head, Department of Livestock Production Management, Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Veterinary Education and Research, Pondicherry. He has ben one of the earlier workers on basic Physiology and Management of Japanese quails when the species was introduced to our country during 1974. He established a Japanese quail breeding unit and was associated in the development of "Giriraja" while working in the All India Coordinated Research Project on Poultry for meat at UAS, Bangalore. He is involved in the field of Poultry Science for the past 37 years. His books include (a) Scientific Poultry Production (2 Editions, 1987 and 1998) (b) Scientific Poultry Production- a unique Encyclopedia (2006), (c) Veterinary Biostatistics (2007) (d) Small-scale Broiler Production (2008) and (e) Small-scale Layer Production (2008). He has also published 50 research papers, 15 popular articles and a farmer’s bulletin.