BALOCHISTAN, where wheat harvesting is going to start next week, looks set to produce 793,000 tonnes of grains this year, up from 744,000 tonnes last year.

Per-hectare yield is also estimated to have risen to 2380kg this year from 2133 kg in the last year.

These estimates, based on satellite-based reports of SUPARCO, represent the most optimistic scenario. But officials of provincial agriculture department also say that output will be around 750,000-800,000 tonnes.

Some Quetta-based progressive growers told Dawn that wheat crop had progressed well due to multiple factors including better land preparation with the help of tractors, use of the right mix of fertilisers and above all, a short spell of winter rains that made wheat grains heavier.

“Now, the longer we have moderately sunny days the better it is because wheat grains would dry up to shed unnecessary amount of moisture but will still carry some additional weight,” one of these growers told Dawn over telephone.

Since the largest chunk of area under wheat cultivation falls in arid zone and depends on rainwater, even winter rains that came as late as in later part of February have favoured the crop instead of causing any ill effects.

“Besides, wheat grown over irrigated land such as in Nasirabad district has also been saved from any possible pest attack through post-rain on-farm water level management and use of pesticides in most cases,” a Quetta-based grower Saifur Rehman informed Dawn.

Traditionally wheat growers have been using more than half a dozen wheat varieties in Balochistan, the latest one of which was developed in 2005. Prominent among them were Zarghoon-79, Zamindar-80, Zardana-92, Sariab-92, Zarlashta-99 and Raskoh-2005.

Growers say that as a result of research made on wheat seed improvement, wheat output had risen to 872,000 tonnes in 2006-07 (with per-hectare yield of 2133kg). But in subsequent years though the yield saw some improvement, overall output never surpassed this level for such reasons as decrease in area under cultivation and irregular crop care due to growing militancy and deteriorating law and order situation.

“Substantial increase in support prices made during last four years has encouraged wheat growers and had there been no floods in 2010 and in 2011, wheat output would have risen to a million tonnes level by this time,” according to an official of provincial agricultural department.

But he opined that instead of relying much on hybrid wheat that have reportedly pushed up overall production and per-hectare yield of wheat this year “we should focus on how to preserve the genetic diversity of native wheat seeds that have the potential to give higher yield.”

Quoting a 2010 research report of Agricultural University of Faisalabad, he said years of extensive scientific research had established that genetic diversity of wheat or the natural ability of wheat seeds to produce newer and better varieties on repeated and careful cultivation has been grossly ignored.

“We’ve focused more on developing fertiliser-responsive wheat varieties which start giving higher yields in initial few years of cultivation but later on their yields begin to fall because of excessive use of fertilisers,” he said.

“Development of varieties that respond quickly to use of fertilisers finds more attention because of the involvement of the corporate interest. We forget that we have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on import of fertilisers every year. If a fraction of that is diverted to research on genetic diversity of our own well-known varieties and develop new varieties taking advantage of their natural variability we’d have lots of new varieties as more dependable sources of higher yields.”

RICE: This year rice production in Balochistan is also estimated to have crossed 354,000 tonnes up from 300,000 tonnes in the cropping year 2011-12 primarily because growers in Jaffarabad, Nasirabad and Usta Muhammad had cultivated high-yield hybrid paddy crops.

The average per acre yield of hybrid is reported to have risen to 80 maunds against the national average yield of 25 maunds per acre for traditional varieties.

From a historic high of around 645,000 tonnes in 2008-09 and 2009-10, Balochistan’s rice output had plunged to 131,000 tonnes in 2010-11 because of the super floods of July-September 2010. Another flood hit Balochistan between the last week of February and first week of March 2011 but rice crop was not damaged as badly as in 2010 as harvesting had almost been completed.

Water shortage, however, had hit the paddy crop depriving at least 15 per cent of the area under paddy plantation of adequate water supply, according to officials of Balochistan’s agriculture department. These officials say that during 2012-13 rice crop, the harvesting of which has been completed, the per-hectare yield was recorded around 3250kg.

Rice growers say that overall rice output would have been much higher had post-flood 2011 measures been more appropriate.

They say that in some rice growing districts paddy cultivation had been postponed because by the time of initial seed planting in March-April 2012, vast areas of land had still not recovered from the effects of 2011 floods.

They, however, say that conditions for paddy transplantation at the second stage were conducive for better growth because the rain-fed areas where normally the supply of water for paddy saplings remains an issue, paddy fields had enough water during the 2012 crop.

Cereals production in Balochistan has remained stagnant below a million tonnes for the last few years, down from more than 1.4 million tonnes in mid 1990s, because of growing militancy and deterioration of law and order that have hit food crops cultivation hard in upland areas.

Rice and wheat are main food crops of the province though wheat output almost always falls short of the population’s requirement and Balochistan has to rely on Sindh and Punjab for additional wheat supplies. But if rice production reaches near half a million tonnes, as it did in 2006-07 when rice output was 478,000 tonnes, part of the production goes to Karachi for both local consumers and exporters. — Mohiuddin Aazim