PESHAWAR, Jan 3: The staff of the Agricultural Extension Department must inform growers about principles of increasing wheat yield, including timely sowing, use of quality seeds, balanced fertilizer application and eradication of weeds
, in their respective working areas.
These views were expressed by Dr Fazale Subhan renowned wheat scientist of Agricultural Research Institute, Tarnab, while briefing participants of a training programme held here at Tarnab on Monday.
The day-long programme was organized by the Technology Transfer Institute, an affiliate institute of the Pakistan Agricultural Research Council, Tarnab, Peshawar, in collaboration with the Agricultural Extension Department for field staff looking after farm management in Peshawar district.
Dr Subhan briefed the participants about improved wheat management practices like determining precise sowing time, techniques for land preparation, sowing, fertilizer application and measures to control weed and disease.
Dr Subhan also briefed field staff about improved wheat varieties and their cultivation zones and susceptibility of various seed strains to different diseases and insects. He said that weeds reduces wheat yield by up to 35 percent.
Stressing the need for obtaining better crop yield, he said that crops should be watered four times - first 20 to 25 days after sowing, second at the booting stage, third when the grain is in milky form and fourth irrigation was optional and it should be applied according to the availability of water, crop needs and local weather condition.
Highlighting the importance of the farming sector, he said that it provided the main impetus for the country's growth and it accounted for 25 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) and employed 48 per cent of the total workforce.
Agriculture, he said, also contributed as a market for industrial products and contributed substantially to export earning. Dr Subhan said that wheat contributed 12.5 per cent to value-addition in agriculture and 3.1 per cent to GDP.
Wheat, the agricultural expert said, was cultivated on more than 20 million acres every year and the estimated annual wheat production was 19 million tonnes. Focussing on shortage of wheat in the NWFP, he said that wheat was cultivated over two million acres in the NWFP with the total production of 1.1 million tonnes while its annual consumption in the province was 3.5 million tonnes.
The NWFP government, he said, spent large amount of money on providing wheat subsidy and also to cover the cost of importing it from Punjab. He said that the per acre yield of wheat in the NWFP was very low by comparison with other provinces. -APP
