LAHORE, Oct 13: The Punjab government on Thursday proposed to fix national wheat target at 21.5 million and 17.6 million tons for itself this season.

In a meeting of the Wheat Working Group at the Agriculture House, the Punjab Agriculture Department proposed increase in the last year target of 17.14 million for Punjab to 17.6 million tons.

The target, however, was to be finalized by the Federal Agriculture Committee (FAC), which was supposed to meet on Oct 11 at Islamabad but its meeting was postponed because of the earthquake.

The Punjab government has also increased acreage target to 15.8 million against 15.7 million last year.

Along with the Wheat Working Group, the Cotton Crop Management Group also met to review the crop situation. It noted that Punjab might not be able to produce more than 10 million bales and national yield might falter to 13 million bales.

Counting the reasons for a shortfall, the group listed hot weather in August which caused shedding of fruit. Riverine areas, which were swept away by floods, also contributed to low yield and early maturity of bolls.

Presiding over the meeting, Punjab Agriculture Minister Arshad Khan Lodhi lauded the effective strategy and control measures adopted jointly by the department and farmers to check pest flare-up on cotton during the current season.

Agriculture Secretary Fayyaz Bashir, Irrigation Secretary Arif Nadeem, Agriculture Marketing Special Secretary Muhammad Yousaf, Agriculture (Ext.& AR) Director-General Chaudhry Abdul Ghaffar, Ayub Agriculture Research Institute, Faisalabad Research DG Dr. Muhammad Afzal, Cotton Research Institute, Multan DG Islam Gill, district officers of agriculture from cotton zones, representatives of pesticides associations and progressive growers also attended the meeting.

Arshad Khan Lodhi stressed the need for continuing such efforts for crop management and plant protection for achieving better yield.

Earlier, Pest Warning Director-General Dr. Ijaz Pervez gave a detailed review of the pest situation on cotton crop and said the current weather conditions were conducive to whitefly, bollworm and army worms, but there was a decreasing trend in their population.

He advised the farmers to continue adopting measures to keep the population of these pests under check as the crop is now ready for harvesting.

Agriculture Secretary Fayyaz Bashir urged the farmers to make efforts for contamination-free and clean picking of cotton to get better price. He said 22 ginning factories in Punjab had been selected to produce 300,000 bales of contamination-free cotton for which special incentives would be paid to growers.

The meeting expressed its satisfaction that no shortage of pesticides had been reported for control of sucking pests and bollworms during the current cotton season in the province.