"Sown on area of around 450,000 acres of land in Golarchi and other areas of Badin district, hybrid rice had pushed the per acre yield to double. While the new variety has taken the per acre yield to around 120 maund per acre and in some cases to over 140 maund per acre," said the agricultural experts and representative of both Pakistani and Chinese companies while talking to a media team, which visited the rice producing district of Badin the other day.
Guard Agricultural Research & Services Limited arranged a "farmers' field day" at Golarchi where media was also invited besides a large number of growers to showcase the demonstration plots of Hybrid 53 and Hybrid 403.
Guard's Executive Seed Division, Shah Rukh Malik said they are expecting to export 100 metric tons of Hybrid 403 seed to Philippines besides promoting coarse hybrid rice varieties in Punjab too. "We will be starting sale of this seed to growers of Central and South Punjab this season so they can also reap the benefits of higher yields. These seeds have more resistance against diseases and also heat tolerant," he added.
He said they were no more concentrating on profit but working to make Pakistan hub for seed export to whole of South Asia including Vietnam, Philippines, India and China. "We wanted to play our role for strengthening the national economy and bringing precious foreign exchange to the national kitty by export rice seed," he said, and added that they wanted to spread the area under hybrid rice production to the whole country.
Sain Daud Shah, an elderly rice grower, speaking at the ceremony said that this area of Sindh was producing rice since ages but the production was very low. Now they were having per acre yield of around 100 or 110 maund from the previous 40 to 50 maund per acre. He appreciated the role of Guard group for introducing hybrid rice in this area. He regretted that the awareness which should have been created by the government was delivered by the private sector.
It had increased the income of the farmers and brought prosperity to their home. Another farmer Mama Abdus Sattar complained that the area gets water once in a year due to which they were growing only one crop. He appealed the government to pay attention to it to promote agriculture. He also paid tribute to the Pakistani and Chinese companies for producing a strong hybrid seed which boosted the yield in this area despite shortage of water.
Arif Bilal, another grower among the audience, told this scribe that hybrid rice had increased the yield bringing prosperity to their homes. While number of rice mills had increased to around 100 besides entry of 40 companies in hybrid rice seed business creating job opportunities. However, he said that only those companies were leading who really had good seed, he added.
Representatives of the Chinese company speaking to the growers said that the new variety has potential of producing more than the previous hybrid varieties besides having resistance against heat and diseases. They said they were paying special attention towards producing quality seed so it should create a win-win situation for both the companies and growers. They said that Prof Yuan Longping came into rice research and creating a hybrid rice variety with higher yield to tackle the issue of hunger. They said their technology was aimed at helping the whole world.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2017