HYDERABAD, Aug 23: There was consensus among agriculturists and cotton growers at a seminar on Tuesday that the province could produce more crops than Punjab more resouces were allocated for agriculture research and the sale of spurious fertilisers, pesticides and substandard seed was stopped.

They were speaking at the seminar on “New Varieties of Cotton” organised by the Sindh Agriculture Research Department in Tandojam.

The department’s director general, Hidayatullah Chhajro, said that the province’s agriculture sector faced numerous problems and stressed the need for more research to produce better seed varieties.

He said that all the departments connected with agriculture, agriculture research, extension, seed corporation and universities, should work together for the sector’s improvement.

He said that an agriculture information cell would be set up to disseminate information among growers about the latest technology and other related matters through print and electronic media and written material.

The secretary general of Sindh Abadgar Board, Syed Nadeem Shah, called upon the government to release more funds to agricultural scientists and make available facilities for research.

He pointed out that the sector contributed 25 per cent to the GDP but had failed to achieve its objectives in the absence of viable policies.

Mr Shah claimed that a large quantity of Sindh’s cotton was transported to Punjab, which was then counted as Punjab’s production. He requested the Sindh chief minister to order the establishment of a check post at the Sindh-Punjab border to keep an eye on the cotton transported out of the province.

He demanded that more irrigation water be provided to the experimental fields of the research department and complained that the cotton growers did not get adequate price from the Trading Corporation of Pakistan at the time of purchase of their produce.

The director of Nuclear Institute of Agriculture, Dr Khursheed Shah, said that substandard seeds and fertilisers, which did not even have potassium, were being openly sold in the province. So much so that some companies were even selling coloured gravel as fertiliser.