ISLAMABAD: The joint action group on cotton-seed is expected to hold its first session in Islamabad during the first week of August to take stock of the seed issue and devise plans for attaining goals and objectives for availability of quality seeds, official sources told Dawn on Monday.

Punjab Governor Chaudhry Mohammad Sarwar will chair the meeting, to be attended by federal ministers for national food security and research, and textile industry and climate change, as well as provincial ministers for agriculture.

The group will discuss issues of ensuring systematic cotton-seed production, planning for fast tracking the system of cotton-seed production, exploring opportunities for import of cotton hybrid and BT cotton seeds, acquisition of latest cotton seed technologies and improving domestic research on cotton seed technologies. According to official data, the percentage of certified seed in cotton cultivation has recently been dropped merely to 1.3 per cent from 65pc up till 2004-05.

Premature release of local cotton varieties and failure of the public sector seed corporations in the production of sufficient quantity of pre-basic and basic seed categories also badly impacted the system of seed multiplication.

The share of public sector in the supply of certified seeds to cotton growers has been on the decline for the past 10 years and shows no promise for improvement.

The successful experiments of China and India with BT. Cotton has been termed as the panacea for all problems of cotton production in the country since a large number of cotton farmers resorted to large scale cultivation of unauthorised BT cotton varieties.

The joint action group on cotton seeds will discuss the challenges being faced by the government in the supply of certified cotton seeds. It will review the provision of legal framework through the passage of amended Seed Act and Plant Breeder’s Rights Act from the parliament.

The group will also discuss strengthening of seed production system both in public and private sectors; strengthening of regulatory institutions like Federal Seed Certification and Registration Department, Bio-Safety Commission, and variety protection system; and stringent measures for controlling the pre-mature release of varieties and fake cotton seeds.

Cotton is the second largest crop in Pakistan after wheat, and is grown over an area of around 8 million acres. On average, cotton is produced equivalent to Rs337 billion each year which corresponds to 1.4pc of GDP.

The highest cotton production was recorded at 14.26 million bales in 2004-05. However, in the last ten years, cotton production remained stagnant ranging between 11.5 million bales to 13.6 million bales. The main reason for stagnation has been due to the fact that Pakistan has so far not been able to develop any credible cotton hybrid seed to increase per acre yield. The government has set a production target of 15.10 million bales of cotton has for the year 2014-15.

Published in Dawn, July 29th, 2014