ZAHID BAIG

LAHORE: The Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (PARC) has devised a comprehensive plan of around Rs 2.8 billion to promote high yielding disease resistant varieties of different pulse crops aimed at meeting the domestic requirement and bringing down the hefty foreign exchange being spent on their import annually.

"Mash, chickpea and lentil are main imports and around US 1.2 billion dollars were spent during year 2016-18 on their import," said PARC Chairman Dr Yousaf Zafar while talking to Business Recorder at the sidelines of a two-day conference "Future of agriculture in Pakistan."

Pulses are most important sources of vegetable protein and their demand is increasing with the increase in population, he said.

The project designed by the "Plant Science Division" of the Council is spreading over 5-10 years of live aimed at carrying out coordinated research to develop high yielding disease resistant varieties of pulse crops, developing appropriate production technology and identifying new pulses production areas and extending support to farmers with seed and other technologies for pulse success.

According to the document of the project, out of the total area under pulses cultivation, 81.6 percent is under Chickpea (Channa), 15.6 percent under Mung, 1.5 percent under Mash and 1.3 percent is under Lentil (Masoor). Pakistan is facing a shortfall of 42 percent in demand and production of Chickpea, 33.9 percent in Mung, 93.6 percent in Mash and 96 percent in lentils by calculating consumption by humans, requirement for seed, feed and wastes.

Under the action plan proposed in this plan, providing good quality and high yielding certified varieties seed to the farmers at a subsidized programme, introducing support price and crop insurance, procurement through buy-back arrangements, reducing yield gaps at research and farmer level would be the strategies to increase yield and area under lentils.

Launching of a comprehensive crop diversification and promotion programme by the Ministry of National Food Security & Research, promotion of agricultural mechanization and involvement of private sector for seed, inputs and procurement would be other wings of the action plan.

As per the document, the proposal has been designed in line with directives of the Federal Committee on Agriculture (FCA) to undertake serious R&D in pulses and prepare long term (10-12 year) development plan for pulses, diversification and bridging vast yield and productivity gap between the national average and for higher performance benchmarks of progressive farmers and cover Pakistan Vision 2025 for applying knowledge on increased productivity in agriculture. The project is in line with vision 2030 agenda for sustainable development as it addresses the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of reducing poverty and hunger and responding to climate change and sustainable production and consumption.

Pulses research institutions, under the proposal, will be assigned the tasks to produce pre-basic seed of pulse crops to meet seed requirement of seed companies while the basic and certified seed would be produced by the public and private seed companies.

The proposed project further said that Mash could be promoted in the districts of Khuzdar, Awaran, Loralai, Musakhel and Barkhan in Balochistan while lower and upper Dir, Chitral and Kurram could be targeted in KP. Similarly, this crop can be promoted in Jacobabad, Kashmore, Shikarpur, Matiari and frost free coastal areas in Sindh.

Similarly, it has been proposed that lentils should be promoted in Nasirabad, Jaffarabad, Qila Saifullah and Zhob areas of Balochistan while Bajour, Swat, Mansehra, Tank and Lucky Marwat have been identified as suitable areas in KP.

The proposal has also mentioned gram farmers of Punjab as highly vulnerable to climate stress and during the past many years in spite of planting of this crop on more than 2 million acres and its production is not more than 330,000 tons. Availability of quality seed resistant to diseases and climate change would help increasing the production besides meeting the domestic requirement.

The project document also cited that the Punjab government launched Mung with the cost of Rs 136.262 million and Mung seed were provided to the farmers on over 70,000 acres and this activity increased area under Mung crop.