Zardari urges agriculture scientists to gear up research efforts

President Asif Ali Zardari has called upon agricultural scientists to gear up their research efforts to produce high yielding, disease resistant and water conserving seeds of country's major crops, keeping in view the soaring population, reduced water availability and deteriorating soil health.
These are the challenges we need to overcome now to ensure security of our future generations, he said. This he said during a briefing on food and agriculture held at Aiwan-e-Sadr on Tuesday, which was attended by Minister for Food & Agriculture Mir Israrullah Zehri, M Salman Faruqui, Secretary General Nazar Muhammad Gondal, Ex-Minister for Food & Agriculture and Rana Farooq Saeed Khan, MNA, besides secretaries of Finance and Food & Agriculture and members of Committee on Agriculture Research, Textile/Aptma, Sugar Mills Association and heads of various research wings.
Dr Nadeem-ul-Haq, Deputy Chairman Planning Commission was also present during the meeting. Today's briefing was in line with the President's vision to achieve food security, improve the lot of the farmers, increase export earnings and to address the issues of the stakeholders. The President emphasised genetic revolution through research work on genetic diversity of the country's major crops including wheat, rice and cotton so as to produce disease resistant and high yielding variety of the crops.
The meeting reviewed the progress made so far and briefed the President about the activities being undertaken in this regard. The briefing was informed that currently PARC was focusing on developing hybrid seed of canola, cotton, wheat, sugarcane, aerobic rice cultivation, high bio-redemption of waste water, agriculture machinery development, alternate energy sources for agriculture, bio-fertiliser, watershed management in dams being built, avian influenza and foot & mouth disease/epidemiology and genotyping, nutritional food security, value chain analysis and post harvest losses of mainly guava, mangoes and citrus.
The briefing also informed that so far PARC has developed new indigenous hybrid cotton development programme and has identified five superior hybrid combinations, which have a potential of 20-30 percent increase in yield. 4,000kg of F1 hybrid seed of these five combinations have been produced, which will be planted during this year in different ecologies of cotton and its results will be available at the end of this year. The future thrust in cotton research mainly focuses on development of short duration and determinate hybrids, it informed.
The President while stating that research was a basic pillar of agriculture development in the country urged the federal and provincial research institutions and universities to work together for developing and introducing latest technologies in agriculture and farming sector to enhance crop production on one hand and to adopt water conserving techniques, on the other, so that the growing challenge of food security in the country could be met.
The President said that the growers who are able to produce maximum yields while adopting new technologies and agronomic practices need to be given incentives. Similarly, the researchers also need to be encouraged and provided incentives. He called upon the private sector to step forward in this regard and own the policies and research centre for ensuring that the researchers are provided incentives and facilitated in their research matters. Gohar Ejaz, Chairman Aptma, assured the President that Aptma would provide all possible support and assistance to the research centres and the researchers.
Zardari stressed upon adoption of modernised farming techniques and said that the small farmers should be assisted in all possible manners to adopt the new technologies. He reiterated the commitment of the present government to improve the livelihood of small farmers and rural population. Ours is an agricultural economy so we need to focus on improving the livelihood of those who are associated with it, he remarked.
The President during the meeting re-emphasised adoption of sprinkler irrigation and solar pumps irrigation for maximum utilisation of available water resources for the agricultural sector and for other purposes. He said that the worst victims of the recent floods were the small farmers and the Government was taking all possible steps to facilitate them in compensating their losses and re-cultivating their lands and fields.
The President also appreciated the research institutions of the country for their contribution in research and development of latest technologies and expressed the hope that Chinese help would contribute towards improvement of agricultural sector and producing high yielding crops which are suitable to our ecology.-PR