Cotton crop sowing witnesses 18 percent increase

ISLAMABAD: Cotton cultivation during current sowing season has witnessed 18 percent increase across the crop growing areas of the country as compared to sowing of the corresponding period of last year.

The government had fixed a target to cultivate the cotton crop over an area of 3.11 million hectares during the crop season 2017-18 to fulfill the domestic requirements of the cotton as well as for exporting purpose, said Cotton Commissioner in the Ministry of Textile Industry Dr Khalid Abdullah.

Talking to APP here on Wednesday, he said that crop cultivation targets for the Punjab Province were set at 2.42 million hectares and in Sindh it was set to cultivate the cotton over an area of 0.65 million hectares.

So far, he said that cotton crop had been cultivated over 1.54 million hectares of land in Punjab, where as the Sindh province had put about 0.299 million hectares of land under the cotton crop cultivation.

Meanwhile, he said that cotton had been cultivated over 1.84 million hectares across the crop growing areas of the country as against the set target of 3.11 million hectares.

Overall, he said that the cotton crop had been cultivated over 59 percent area out of the total targeted areas set for current sowing season 2017-18).

The Punjab Province had achieved 63.5 percent crop sowing targets set for current sowing season, where as Sindh was able to achieve 46 percent area out of the total cultivable area, he added.

Dr Abdullah further said that the cotton cultivation had witnessed 31.5 percent increase in Punjab, however it was reduced by 21 percent in Sindh during the period under review.

He informed that due to favorable weather conditions, availability of certified seeds and other crop inputs, it was expected that targeted areas for the current sowing season would be achieved.

Cotton Commissioner said that agriculture experts from Balochistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa were provided three months training in order to bring the potential areas under cotton production to enhance the local crop output.

It may be recalled that Federal Committee on Cotton (FCC) had fixed cotton production targets at 14 million bales during the current crop sowing season.

The Punjab Province had been tasked to produced 10 million bales, where as in Sindh, crop out put targets were fixed at 4 million bales.

Cotton output for Balochistan and Kyhber Pakhtunkhwa was fixed at 0.038 million bales and 0.002 million bales respectively.