Senior Advisor to the Chief Minister Punjab, Sardar Zulfikar Ali Khan Khosa said here Wednesday that Punjab government plans to double its cotton production from 8 million bales to 16 million bales by 2015. Speaking at the inaugural session of 5th meeting of the Asian Cotton Research and Development Network, Sardar Zulfiqar Ahmed Khosa said that the greatest challenge for Punjab's cotton is infestation of Cotton Leaf Curl Virus (CLCV), which has plagued our cotton productivity badly.
Recommending steps that lead to the solution of this problem is the greatest challenge for this workshop, he added. The three-day international conference of cotton research scientists has been jointly sponsored by government of Punjab, International Cotton Advisory Committee and CABI. Fifty delegates from 15 countries are participating in the conference and would read their research papers.
Khosa stressing the need for fully exploit the potential of the "white gold" of Pakistan said that last time Punjab produced over 11 million bales was in 2004. Since then, our production has remained around 10 million bales. Now, we have to import 2 million bales worth $1.5 billion from India," Khosa regretted. He said that the Punjab government is adopting a two-fold strategy, one is to strengthen our local research institutes, and the other to import available international technologies for local adaptation.
He said that the present provincial government has invested over Rs 150 million on various research projects to find local solutions to the key issues in the cotton sector. He further said that BT cotton varieties were approved by Punjab Seed Council for the first time since the process was initiated eight years earlier. He said that the present government wanted to keep the international flow of technologies open with reasonable assurance of Intellectual Property Rights.
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