20 February 2005	Sunday	10 Muharram 1426

LAHORE, Feb 19: The Punjab Seed Council (PSC) has approved two new varieties of cotton and sugarcane for cultivation but, more significantly, it has also banned the use of 42 varieties of cotton, wheat and sugarcane.

The varieties are CIM 496 produced by the Central Cotton Research Institute (CCRI) of Multan and SPF 245 that represents research work by scientists of the Ayub Research Institute, Faisalabad.

New seed for cotton and sugarcane crops were overdue because the existing high yield and resistant varieties of cotton, although still widely sown, were moving close to exhausting their potential while sugarcane seed is mostly the same that is used in India, except for two varieties. All of them have low sugar content.

The banned seeds include 23 cotton, 10 wheat and nine paddy varieties because they had become susceptible to "disease, pest and virus attacks". Their yield capacity had suffered over the years but many farmers were cultivating them due to their past performance and because they could save expenditure on seed by using seed from the previous crop, a common practice among small farmers. This is the first time that the cultivation of low quality seed has been banned in Punjab or any other part of Pakistan.

SPF 245 is attributed to 11.35 sugar recovery against the six to seven per cent recovery from the best of currently used seed. Experts hope that wide scale cultivation of the new variety would make a positive impact on both growers and sugar millers.

While the sugarcane crop is extensively raised in Punjab, Sindh and NWFP, research for improving seed has been a largely neglected area, a fact borne out by dependence on the same low sugar yield varieties for years.

Experts hope that the introduction of SPF 245 would ease the situation for both the growers and sugar millers by helping a former produce better crops and the latter by providing them higher sugar content from the same quantity of cane.

The decision to approve and reject varieties were taken at a meeting of the PSC presided by provincial Agriculture Minister Arshad Khan Lodhi in Lahore on Thursday and attended by senior scientist and officials of all research organizations of Punjab and federal organizations working in Punjab or Islamabad.

The federal agriculture commissioner and the director general seed certification also participated in the deliberations, besides Fayyaz Bashir, secretary agriculture Punjab, Aman Ullah Khan Niazi, managing director of the Punjab Seed Corporation, and the secretary of PSC.

The cotton crop scene has been different due to remarkable research conducted by the CCRI in the aftermath of widespread devastation by cotton leaf curl virus (CLCV) that brought down the country's produce from an average of 9-10 million bales to less than seven million bales.

The CCRI produced a number of high yield virus and pest resistant varieties after the CLCV crises from the late 1990s onwards and not only revived the crop, but also gave it the kind of fill up that helped produce this year's bumper and Pakistan's highest every crop that has exceeded 14.15m bales and is still being counted.

Research on CIM 496 has taken about 10 to 12 years for development and its field trails have been conducted for the last about six years. Yield conscious growers keep a tab on research on varieties when they reach field trail stage and start using the seed before it is officially identified for cultivation.

A percentage of this year's cotton thus comprises crop raised from CIM 496 and represents, along with two other CCRI varieties, CIM 473 and 499 about 60 per cent of cotton area in Punjab.

The institute made its contribution when Dr Zafar Altaf was secretary Minfal and Dr Zahoor Ahmed headed the institute as its director. The government later rewarded Dr Ahmed with the President's Pride of Performance Award.

Another scientist who made a vital contribution to CCRI's research is Dr Mehboob Ahmed, appointed scientist emeritus by the late governor of Punjab, General Jilani, in recognition of his research on potato seed and cotton varieties as founder of the Punjab Seed Corporation.