SUKKUR, March 5: The Pakistan Oil Seeds Development Board, a subsidiary organization of the federal ministry of food and agriculture, has reactivated its tissue laboratory at its Karachi office.

This was stated by Waris Shaikh, director of the PODB, Sindh and Balochistan, in a press briefing here on Wednesday.

The reopening of the laboratory, Mr Shaikh said, would pave the way for producing scores of tissue varieties in the farming sector.

He said that the PODB had decided to train a large number of agriculture graduates from the interior of Sindh, enabling them to take over jobs in the Board.

The PODB, he said, was working to raise yields of sunflower and canola to reduce the edible oil import bill, which had exceeded Rs7.5 billion annually.

He said the Board had achieved major successes in the Sukkur and Larkana divisions, where the sunflower yield had been trebled in 2002-2003 by comparison with the output achieved in 2001- 2002.

He said in addition to better yields, sunflower was less water intensive than other crops like sugarcane, adding that a number of landlords in Sukkur, Kandhkot, Jacobabad, Larkana, Shikarpur and Naushahro Feroze had shifted to sunflower cultivation.