MULTAN, May 15: Role of official and unofficial seed suppliers and pesticides firms came under severe criticism by the growers and minister of state for agriculture at a meeting held here on Saturday to formulate cotton policy for 2004-05.

Agriculture minister Sikander Hayat Bosan presided over the meeting attended by almost all the stakeholders of cotton market from farm to export level. Federal agriculture secretary Tariq Mehmood and vice president Pakistan Central Cotton Committee Dr Ibad Badar Saddiqi were also present in the meeting.

The minister urged the private seed companies not to market uncertified seed as the premature release of the future cotton varieties caused outbreak of pest attack and cotton leaf curl virus. At this, the representatives of the private seed companies blamed the official research institutes for the premature release of under trial cotton verities.

They said that the government could have known the real culprits if it conducted a secret monitoring of the public-sector cotton breeding institutes. Talking about pesticides, the minister observed that their standard in the country was pathetic as compared to rest of the world.

He said the farming community rightly alleged that the pesticides firms though market substandard products but they fetched exorbitant prices.

Earlier, the growers' representatives criticised what they called substandard seed, adulterated pesticides and fertilizers and said despite all shortcomings they had to pay a price much higher than the prices of farm inputs prevailing in the world.

The minister directed the ginners to modernize their machinery in order to process quality cotton with better ginning turnout. He said the problem of contamination in cotton could be addressed if the ginners would encourage the growers by paying premium price on better quality phutti (seed cotton), that was, free of non-lint contents and sorted out by fibre quality.

He criticized the performance of Sindh Seed Corporation and directed the public sector institution to improve its services and quality of its product line.