March 16, 2003	Sunday	Muharram 12, 1424

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SUKKUR March 15: With the sugarcane and cotton crops becoming more cost intensive and their prospects becoming more dim with the continued shortage of water, the outlook for sunflower farming is becoming brighter in Sukkur, Jacobabad, Larkana, Kandhkot and Jacobabad.

Earlier, rice has also been one of the major crop grown in these areas.

This was said by Waris Shaikh, director, Pakistan Oil Seeds Development Board (Sindh and Balochistan), while briefing newsmen here the other day.

He said the PODB had succeeded in bringing over 70,000 acres of arable land under sunflower cultivation in three of the above districts — namely Sukkur, Larkana and Jacobabad — and the sunflower-cultivated area was likely to be trebled by 2004.

Waris Shaikh, director of the PODB, said that sugarcane, rice and cotton could be sown only once in a year while their cultivation posed a detrimental effect for the soil utility over a span of 30 years.

This, he said, was not the case with sunflower, which could be sown twice a year and required only one-third of the water by comparison with other crops.