It was established on 11 December 1938 as Bengal Agricultural Institute (BAI) by Sher-e-Bangla A. K. Fazlul Huq, then the Chief Minister of undivided Bengal and later upgraded to university in 2001 renamed it as Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University.

[1] Since its establishment, the university plays a role in agricultural research and development (R&D) of the region through the creation of knowledge, agricultural technology generation and transfer, crop diversification and intensification for the benefit of farming communities.

The Sher-e-Bangla Agricultural University Act 2001 was passed in the Parliament of Bangladesh on 9 July 2001.

The foundation stone was laid by the then Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on 15 July 2001 and inaugurated the university activities through the appointment of the first vice-chancellor: Md.

Presently about 3,300 undergraduate and postgraduate students are enrolled and are taught by faculty members.

As a result, it subscribed to JSTOR, HINARI, AGORA, OARE, Oxford Scholarship Online, Pearsons, Taylor & Francis ebooks, CRCnetBase, Wiley Online, IMF e-Library, Emerald Insight, TEEAL, LiCob and it has an institutional repository.

The university has built a Digital Archive on Agricultural Theses and Journals (DAATJ) under the funding of UGC-HEQEP.

The Genetics and Plant Breeding Department has a major research thrust on development of new varieties of crops; identification of parental lines for hybrid development; molecular characterisation of crops and germplasm characterisation, documentation and preservation.