The Department of Horticulture was established in 1925 in the Punjab Agricultural College, Lyallpur now University of Agriculture, Faisalabad. Research in the department is organized into three disciplines of horticulture; Fruits, Vegetables, Floriculture & Landscape. In 1990, Plant tissue Culture Cell was created in the department. In 2003, department was upgraded as Institute of Horticultural Sciences with four sections. A new section of medicinal and aromatic plants was added. The institute is a leading center in Pakistan for teaching and research with 20 permanent academic staff.

Institute offers undergraduate and postgraduate courses in the relevant disciplines. It is equipped with the complete range of resources needed to meet the modern demands for education and research. Institute has well established experimental orchards, Sq.No.9 which is among the oldest orchard established during 1912 to boost up horticultural production in the Punjab area. Today a good collection of tropical and subtropical fruit plants is maintained and research facilities on nutrition, physiology, rootstocks, unfruitfulness and production of fruits like citrus, mango, date, guava, jujuba and grapes etc. are provided. Another garden of 120 acres is also established recently at Post-graduate Agriculture Research Station (PARS) to cope with the increasing needs of student research. A germplasm bank of date palm, citrus and mango is established to provide genetic diversities for research.

Further a fully established landscape studio is established to meet the needs for advanced landscape designing techniques. Facilities for scanning, digitizing, printing and CAD software are provided. A Science and technology project entitled “Export Quality Cut Flower Production And Extraction Of Essential Oil of Rosa” is being run by institute and three Ph.D and many M.Sc. students are working on various aspects in this project. Recently a Citrus Sanitation laboratory is established in the institute to establish a modern Citrus Nursery of Certified Plants through sanitation by microbudding and micrografting techniques in vitro. Department has laboratories for graduate research where extensive range of modern apparatus is available. A well established tissue culture laboratory is there to demonstrate propagation and other operations related to all sort of plants in vitro cultures.

Under Olericulture section research is being carried out on nutritional trials in different vegetables, hybrid seed production of vegetables, effect of dates of planting and spacing on growth and yield of vegetables and Tunnel production of vegetables (Cucumber, Tomato, Chillies). A mushroom laboratory was established to facilitate the following aspects: development of spawn production technology, substrate preparation and improved method of composting for button mushroom, cultivation technology of summer white button mushroom, standardization of cultivation technology of Oyster and Chinese mushrooms and Post- harvest handling of mushrooms.

Medicinal and aromatic plants section was added in institute with the objectives: Exploration, exploitation and conservation of potential indigenous medicinal & aromatic plants, Development of production and post harvest management technology of medicinal and aromatic plants, Development of protocols for preservation of plant parts, identification/isolation of active ingredients, Providing education, training to the growers and consultancy services to the medicinal and aromatic plant industry. In addition institute has a well established Vegetable Research Area, Floriculture and landscape area for ornamental plants and a fruit plant nursery.