Sikandar Bosan for bio-fortification of food commodities

ISLAMABAD: Minister for National Food Security and Research Sikandar Hayat Khan Bosan on Tuesday urged the need for making wheat, maize and rice bio-fortified to improve human health, besides ensure access to health and nutritious food for the people in the country.

Addressing the 42nd meeting of Pakistan Agriculture Research Council (PARC) Board of Governors called upon the members for utilizing their vision and experience in revitalizing agricultural research in the country.

He said that PARC had played a vital role towards improving the agriculture sector in various ways over the past and lauded the efforts of its scientists.

The minister highlighted various PARC new interventions and projects which include olive initiatives and discussed research priorities and various issues of agriculture sector including production planning, cost of productions, crops scenario, policies for research, seed purity and quality.

The board of governors also discussed the future prospects of technologies, innovations future planning and the research agenda for 2017-18.

Federal Secretary National Food Security and Research Fazal Abbas Maken said that it was expected that the food policy implementation would help in promotion of value added food production while creating a new class of agricultural businesspersons.

As a result the availability of diversified food products will increase that will help to improve the economic access of food to the socially deprived communities living in marginal and areas.

Dr Yusuf Zafar Chairman PARC informed the board about various steps for improvement of performance and efficiency of PARC research system and said that achieving food security and nutrition was a high priority for the government.