ISLAMABAD, Feb 18: The Higher Education Commission (HEC) will collaborate in the massive salinity management programme with the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) to bring vast areas of salinity-hit waste lands into productive use.

This was stated by Adviser to the Prime Minister for Science and Technology and HEC Chairman Prof Dr Attaur Rahman while presiding over the concluding session of a two-week international training workshop on Bio-Saline Agricultural Technology organized by PAEC’s Nuclear Institute for Agriculture and Biology here.

He appreciated PAEC’s contributions in research and development in nuclear power, industrial support services, health and agriculture.

Dr Ata said the HEC intended to develop an extensive salinity management programme alongwith the Indus Left Bank outfall canal with demonstrated technology evolved by the PAEC which utilized saline lands by growing salt-tolerant crops.

He said about 14 million acres of saline and water-logged waste lands in the country required urgent technological solutions.

He said the proposed HEC-PAEC project for utilizing these lands would help alleviate poverty and stop migration of local people by providing them means of livelihood.

He urged the scientists to use research as commercial wealth and offered to join hands with the PAEC in other areas of national importance as a step to lead the country towards knowledge-based economy.

PAEC Chairman Parvez Butt said the newly-created commission’s Biosciences Pvt Ltd aims at delivering the fruits of research to the end users.

He said the PAEC would reach out to the farmers and provide them productive technological tools and quality services at affordable rates.

He said the commission was operating 13 cancer hospitals in the country which were providing medicare to more than 350,000 patients while six more such hospitals were being built.

Besides, the existing cancer treatment facilities will be expanded and upgraded, Parvez Butt said.

He said PAEC’s research and development programme encompassed diverse areas which were mutually supportive as nuclear technology was a binding force between all of them.

He said there had been steep rise in resource allocation to PAEC for its nation-building programme which resulted in the expansion of work output and increase in number of projects undertaken during the last five to six years.

In his introductory lecture on bio-saline technology, Member Biosciences PAEC Dr Kausar Abdullah Malik said engineering solutions for reclamation of saline lands were expensive and time-taking, adding that there was a need to utilize the salinity-affected lands.

The PAEC through use of bio-tech and nuclear techniques had identified the crops/trees which could be grown on these lands, he added.

Dr Kausar said as part of its international collaboration, the PAEC was providing bio-saline agricultural technology to nine IAEA member countries under the auspices of IAEA technical cooperation programme.

He said the PAEC was already undertaking reclamation of 25,000 acres of saline land in the country under the farmer participatory programme for which the federal government had allocated Rs178 million.

Dr Edith Taleisnik, Professor of Plant Physiology from Argentina, who attended the workshop as expert lecturer informed that a bilateral agreement between Pakistan and Argentina was being drafted which would cover sharing of agricultural experiences.

The host of the workshop, NIAB Director Dr Iqrar Khan said the PAEC conducted these training workshops on regular basis to train its own human resource and those from the IAEA and OIC member countries. The workshop was jointly organized by the PAEC, HEC and Comstech.