The Crawford Fund Training course on Phenotyping cereals in variably saline landscape in Pakistan arranged at the University of Agriculture Faisalabad concluded. The training was arranged by the Saline Agriculture Research Center, Institute of Soil Sciences, UAF.
Addressing on the occasion, UAF Vice Chancellor Professor Dr Iqrar Ahmad Khan said that agriculture is the backbone of our economy. He said that salinity poses a major threat to agriculture. He said that sustainable crop production in the country is threatened by factors include soils degradation by excessive salts accumulation and soil deterioration by the use of saline brackish underground water. This results in complete crop failure in many cases.
Former vice chancellor Professor Dr Riaz Hussain Qureshi said that the research is a continuous process to fight the challenges. He said that we have to develop new saline tolerant high yielding varieties. He said that there is a need to breed more salt tolerant cereals in the country. He said that the researchers had introduced genes for salt tolerance in crops, proving their adoption in spatially variable field is difficult.
Dr Ed-Barrett Lennard from University of Western Australia said that super fast should be used to get the sodium exclusion and Nax2 gene into well-adapted Pakistani wheat. It is now possible to introgress gene, bulk up seed test a need salt tolerant wheat variety
Dean Agriculture Professor Dr Amjad Aulak said that we have to increase the productivity for the ever increasing population as the agriculture land was diminishing. Director Institute Dr Javaid Akhtar said the tainting was aimed at building capacity in the early career researchers to conduct the cereal phynotyping experiment in variable saline landscapes of Pakistan.
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