Bidhan Chandra Krishi Viswavidyalaya (BCKV) is a state agricultural university headquartered at Mohanpur in Nadia district, West Bengal. The university was established on 1 September 1974, but its academic lineage extends to the earlier agricultural college at Sabour and to agricultural teaching structures that developed in West Bengal before the university’s creation. At establishment, BCKV had two constituent faculties: Agriculture and Veterinary Sciences. BCKV was designed around the land-grant model of agricultural education, research and extension. In 1980 it established a North Bengal campus at Pundibari in Cooch Behar to address the distinct agro-ecological conditions of northern West Bengal. The institutional structure changed substantially in 1995 when the veterinary faculty was separated to form part of the West Bengal University of Animal and Fishery Sciences. Another major reorganization followed in 2001, when the North Bengal campus and associated infrastructure were used to create Uttar Banga Krishi Viswavidyalaya. Following those changes, BCKV developed three principal faculties at Mohanpur: Agriculture, Horticulture and Agricultural Engineering. The university later expanded undergraduate agricultural education through extended campuses, opening a College of Agriculture at Burdwan in 2014 and another at Bankura in 2015. BCKV integrates classroom education with field research and farmer-oriented extension. Its extension system works through regional research stations, extension education units and Krishi Vigyan Kendras, supporting demonstrations, training, field days and technology transfer. The university’s institutional role therefore reaches beyond degree education. It connects crop science, horticulture, agricultural engineering, farm research and extension across southern and central West Bengal and supports region-specific work on productivity, sustainability and rural livelihoods. The university’s extension architecture is designed to move research from laboratories and experimental farms into village-level practice, while regional stations allow scientists to work with contrasting soils, crops and agro-climatic conditions. This research-extension linkage is a defining feature of BCKV’s agricultural-university model.