HYDERABAD: Dr Fateh Marri, Vice Chancellor, Sindh Agriculture University, has said that production problems have increased in Pakistan due to the decrease in the area of oil crops and climatic change, which has led to shortage of edible oil and increase in oil import bill.
Expressing his remarks during a PhD seminar titled “Evaluation of sunflower hybrids for yield and oil traits under water stress condition” by Majid Hussain Kaleri, a scholar of the Department of Plant Breeding and Genetics, Dr Fateh Marri said that edible oil imports in Pakistan are the second largest capital expenditure after petroleum, during the first 11 months of the fiscal year ending June 2022, Pakistan’s cooking oil imports were 3.56 billion dollars.
He said Pakistan’s dependence on imports of edible oil and oilseeds to meet its domestic demand for edible oil has been increasing over the past two decades.
Marri said that during 2020, about 86% of the domestic edible oil consumption had to be imported, which is a big challenge for the experts. He said SAU is working on oilseed crops in the light of joint agreements with various national and international institutions, while the plant breeding and genetics department of the university is performing important research services on the seeds of various crops.
PhD scholar Majid Hussain Kaleri has said in his research that different sunflower cultivars were tested on dry and humid soils in different regions, and found better production results on less water, while there is also scope for research work for new commodities of sunflower and other oilseed crops.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023
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