ISLAMABAD, Nov 30: Pakistan’s premier agricultural research body has requested the Australian authorities to extend the life of the multi-million-dollar Australia-Pakistan Agriculture Sector Linkages Programme (ASLP) up to five years to achieve the project targets.

The three-year programme is focused on the horticulture (mango and citrus) and livestock (dairy) enterprises and simultaneously addresses underlying issues of water management and institutional and technical capacity building.

Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (Parc) Chairman Dr M. E. Tusneem had made a formal request in this regard to Mr Les Baxter, Research Programme Manager Horticulture Australian Centre for International Agriculture Research (ACIAR), who led a delegation of Australian researchers during its nine-day visit to Pakistan which concluded here on Friday.

The delegation during its stay also met with various authorities to gauge the progress work on the ASLP.

Sources told Dawn that high-ups of the Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Livestock (Minfal) were also in favour of the extension of the vital project keeping in view the country’s prospects for the export of citrus and mango.

After a year of ban, the Russia has allowed Pakistan to re-start export of its citrus to its market. Minfal officials also see resumption of mango export to the Russian market along with rice in the near future. And, ASLP is of immense help in this regard.

But this year, sources said, ASLP has seen a sort of stagnation as for as its citrus related component was concerned.

PARC officials were of the view that ASLP had played a vital role in the development of the citrus crop from production up to the marketing chain. Now, the Australian technical support was being taken for the mango crop as well.

A Parc spokesman said that Mr Baxter was of the view that ASLP should speed up work on the citrus component of the project as it was relatively slow, while work on the mango crop was going on at fairly reasonable pace.

He said that Mr Baxter had also acknowledged that delay in the release of funds by the Australian side was mainly responsible for slowing down of the citrus project.

The ASLP has a total budget of 6.6 million Australian dollars. Its objective is to transfer Australian knowledge and expertise to key sectors of Pakistan agribusiness to increase profitability and enhance export potential.

This project is to contribute to poverty alleviation of smallholder farmers through collaborative research and development; and to enhance the capacity of the Pakistan research, development and extension system to deliver targeted and practical research outputs to agribusiness and farmers.