(Pakistan Point News / Online - 17th November, 2019) National Agricultural Research Centre (NARC) Director Dr Ghulam Muhammad Ali said NARC has initiated 13 projects under Prime Minister Imran Khan's Agriculture Emergency in the country.The projects will bring many fundmental changes in agriculture sector. He said that the NARC was working on projects related to wheat, rice and sugarcan under the Prime Minister Agriculture Emergency.The research on these crops will help our scientests and researchers working in agriculture sector to enhance crops production, adding that they were working to improve their research labs as well.
Dr Muhammad Ali said NARC has highly qualified and skilled researchers' team and they are motivated to start work on the projects with new spirit and throught.Taking about international need, he said long-size rice demand is growing in the world, adding that we sowed as many as 600 new types of Green Super Rice (GSR) seeds this year in order to increase rice export. The country atmosphere is suitable to many of these types and research will be initated on these types in the next phase.
Dr Muhammad Ali said the same research will be done to enhance production of wheat and sugarcan. He hoped that new types of seeds will help increase in production of crops from 10 to 20 mounds per acre.Talking about stoberry, the director said NARC had introduced four types of stoberry some 30 years back and today stoberry production is being done all over the country. As a result, locally produced stoberry is available in markets across at reasonable charges.
The director further said it was hard work and dedications of our scientests that today farmers sowed Zaitoon (Olive) crop over 35,000 acre of land. In the next phase, special factory will be established to produce Olive oil from the crop.Talking about wheat, director said the centre has introduced at least six new types of wheat in the past one decade, adding that per acre production of these types are larger than the earlier types.He said the NARC scientest have also introduced four new types of banana.
These types are suitable for production in parts of Sindh province. He added our scientists produced new types from tissue culture which is protected from all kinds of diseases.He said this during an interview with "Online" in Islamabad on Sunday. He went on to say that the centre had transferred this banana production technology to two private companies in Sindh.He said the centre is also providing new kinds of banana to Sindh and our scientists are equaly motivated to increase patato production.
He said this will help to provide patato seed to farmers as our farmers were importing patato seed from abroad.Dr Muhammad Ali said Pakistan can also cast fruits and vegetables on mountains like other countries in the world. He said Gilgit-Baltistan, Chitral and Malakand areas are suitable for productions almond, apricot, walnut, pine nuts and other kinds of fruits. He said these productions will increase export of the country.
