ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Agriculture Research Council (PARC) has embarked upon a plan to impart training to women farmers to make value added olive products by utilizing their own fruit to up raise standard of living.
"To develop cottage industry in target areas, woman farmers are being trained which would play important role in poverty alleviation of respective areas", spokesman of PARC told APP here on Wednesday.
He said working in olive sector at this massive scale would also generate huge financial impact in the development of economy.
He informed that as part of its mega olive project for olive plantation at 50,000 acres in the country till 2019, the Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (PARC) would plant 700,000 new olive plants across the country during the coming months of February and March.
"The project has already completed plantation at an area of 7166 acres in Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, FATA, and Balochistan", he added.
The spokesman said the project had developed protocols of two olive varieties for propagation though tissue culture technology.
Seven olive nurseries have been established so-far and 13 specialized nurseries are in the process of establishment at different components.
He said the project had also established and managed olive mother blocks at all provincial components which would be useful for propagation of true to type olive plants.
PARC is ready to purchase and install 11 oil mills of different capacity at suitable locations for quick processing of farmers produce, he added.
He said that PARC was going to complete new olive plantation under olive commercial project at 8000 acres during 2015-16 beside 34 training conducted and 1250 persons trained at different districts under provincial components for orchard lay-out, orchard management, olive nursery raising and management, Geographic information system (GIS), harvest and post-harvest handling of olive fruit and value addition.
He said working on another aspect of this important crop to get maximum financial benefits, project had conducted different experiments on value addition of olive fruit for preparation of olive jam, pickle, murraba, syrup, bakery items, olive beauty cream and some other makeup items.
Expected oil after five years of plantation from 50,000 acres is 14.0 million liters valuing Rs.28 billion, he said adding these activities would also create employment generation at larger scale and develop cottage in the country.
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