ZAHID BAIG

LAHORE: After successful results of hybrid rice in Sindh, the Guard Agricultural Research & Services Ltd (GARS) is planning to launch hybrid rice seeds (coarse variety) for growers in Punjab from next season.

“We have completed test trials of our hybrid seed in Central Punjab and South Punjab, and want to make seeds available commercially from the next season witnessing encouraging results of the seed. At present, the IRRI rice is giving 50-60 maunds per acre in Punjab and we are quite hopeful that our hybrid seed would give 120-130 maunds per acre,” said Guard Agricultural Research & Services Ltd Chief Executive Shahzad Ali Malik while talking to a group of journalists here on Thursday.

Shahrukh Malik, Executive Seed Division of the Company, Rizwan Younis General Manager and representative of Yuan Long Ping International Company from China were also present on this occasion.

Shahzad said the lifestyle of rice growers had improved in Sindh, tenants’ kids were now going to schools and their income had increased since they started sowing the hybrid rice. He claimed that production had increased by 55-60 percent and hoped that same result would be gained in Punjab changing the socio-economic conditions of Punjab farmers too.

The Company would be targeting Okara, Deepalpur, Pak Pattan and Haveli Lakha areas in the first phase. In Sindh, hybrid rice is being sown over 1.5 million acres of land and in Punjab potentially it could be sown over 4 million acres of land. Nevertheless, we will be making efforts to ensure its sowing over 500,000-700,000 acres of land in first stage, added Shah Rukh Malik Executive Seed Division.

He said trial in Punjab had been made on large scale and the Company arranged visits of farmers so that they could see themselves, yield and other potential of this variety.

Shahzad Malik, however, said they had to make lot of efforts prior to reaching this stage as some companies in the past imported seeds and sold it to farmers without research and trials. Those seeds were failed and created a negative impression of hybrid seed. “We had to make a lot of effort to dispel this impression.”

He said some 55 companies were importing seeds in Pakistan and the government should formulate a law that only those companies could market their seed which are at least producing 40 percent of their marketed hybrid rice in Pakistan. Then these companies could gradually go to 100 percent production in the country. He disclosed that presently they were also producing 40 percent of their seed within the country and making efforts to increase it.

Malik also showed his concern that after 18th amendment the companies were finding it hard to get their product registered with the provincial governments. He proposed that seed should be registered at federal level and an Authority should be constituted on the pattern of Drug Registration Authority of Pakistan (DRAP) for medicine registration.