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Area under cotton up by 11pc
KARACHI: Federal Food
and Agriculture Minister Khair Mohammad Junejo has said that
area under cotton crop has increased by 11.37 per cent to
2.851 million hectares against the set target despite water
shortage. He was speaking at the 69th general body meeting of
Pakistan Central Cotton Committee (PCCC) on Saturday.
He said that according to recent reports cotton was sown over
an area of 2.455 million hectares in Punjab, which was 21.5
per cent higher than the target of 2.020 million hectares. In
Sindh, cotton was sown over 367,000 hectares and in
Balochistan over 29,000 hectares against the targets of
500,000 hectares and 40,000 hectares respectively, the
minister added.
He was of the view that if conditions remained favourable, the
country could harvest a reasonable crop this year as well.
Junejo pointed out that area sown with cotton crop increased
in Balochistan, which was a good sign and hoped that the
setting up of a ginning factory in Dera Murad Jamali would pay
the way for other such factories in Balochistan and therefore
more area would be cultivated under cotton.
He called for a similar initiative in DI Khan where much
potential existed for increasing area under cotton crop after
the commissioning of Right Bank Chashma canal. The minister
underlined the need for focussing on vertical increase in
acreage of cotton through developing high-yield potential
varieties coupled with scientific crop and pest management
technologies. He was of the view that this was the
responsibility of research organisations at federal as well as
provincial level.
"It is high time to see why our per hectare yield is stagnant
around 600 kilograms instead of 1,407 kgs in Australia and
1,079 kgs in China," Junejo said. He underlined the need for
developing new varieties to compete in the world market,
particularly after the scrapping of quotas in the US and EU
markets in January 2005.
The News-July 15
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