ISLAMABAD, March 29: An amount of Rs321 million is being spent on setting up two modern laboratories for testing grain quality and ensuring good quality of exportable agricultural produce.

According to official sources, the government had planned to set up the labs at the National Agricultural Research Centre (NARC), Islamabad, and the Tropical Agricultural Research Centre (TARC), Karachi.

They said the project was initiated with the objective of providing better grain quality testing facility in Pakistan to fetch higher prices for agricultural commodities in the international market.

The total amount being spent on establishment of the laboratories included Rs123 million foreign assistance, they added. The sources said the main objective of the project was to facilitate the public and private sectors in getting the wheat products analysed through modern and sophisticated equipment, which would help cope with the international requirements for export and import of these items.

Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (PARC) has initiated work on the project at an estimated cost of Rs198.53 million under the Strengthening of Grain Quality Testing programme.

At present, the NARC and TARC grain quality testing labs are performing quality tests such as moisture content, foreign matter, damaged kernels, shrunken and broken kernels, thousand grain mass, presence of insects, kernel bunt, pesticide residues, protein, gluten test, falling number, drought properties and baking tests apart from fumigation of wheat lots exported by the food department.

The NARC also provides food commodities' quality analyses and physio-chemical quality analyses of wheat and other cereal grains. -APP