KHYBER: Farmers in Bara tehsil of Khyber district have successfully completed the experimental air layering (grafting) of olive plants provided to them free of cost by the district agriculture department.

Farmers said that despite hilly and rugged terrain, they had worked hard to make the air layering process of nearly 150 olive plants a success with weather conditions largely favorable for such an advanced experimentation.

Officials at the Khyber district agriculture office told Dawn that local farmers were imparted advanced training about carrying out air layering of ‘mother plants’ of olive species in order to enable them to ‘produce’ more fruit-bearing olive plants.

They said that the new experimentation in the field of agriculture was aimed at economically empowering the terrorism-affected farming community of Khyber, particularly Bara and Tirah who had lost vast swaths of their fertile farmlands during their decade long displacement.

Olive cultivation offers promising income for farmers in Khyber

They said that the process was aimed at producing more fruit bearing olive plants from one mother plant which had prior verification of Federal Seed Certification Department (FSCD) which regulates the certification of all types of seeds throughout the country.

They insisted that if the experiment of air layering was carried out on uncertified species of olive plant, the FSCD would not certify it due to its inferior nature and would not fetch enough market price for the farmers.

Amin Gul, a Bara farmer who had recently completed air layering on certified mother plants provided to him by the agriculture department, told Dawn that he was quite hopeful of producing over 5000 new olive plants from a mere 150 mother plants.

“The exercise is very tough and requires a lot of effort and care from the farmers but the end result is very fruitful”, he said and added that he was optimistic that the new ‘crop’ could earn him Rs700,000 to Rs800,000 after its sale in the local market.

He said that he was now planning to increase the number of the certified mother plants with an additional piece of his farmland to be allocated for the said process as he was eyeing more monetary benefits in future.

Published in Dawn, August 3rd, 2026