The review meeting of Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (PARC), International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center also known by its Spanish abbreviation CIMMYT and USAID for two days to discuss activities related to Conservation Agriculture (CA) in Pakistan.

The event partners from all over the country gathered to discuss implementation related issues and future projects along with the activities of USAID-funded Agricultural Innovation Program (AIP) for Pakistan and progress on agronomy. The meeting was entitled as ‘AIP-Agronomy: National Meeting on Conservation Agriculture’. The inaugural session of the event had the presence of 75 agriculture professionals from various universities, private firms, and provincial, federal, and international research institutes.

“The crop management has earned the collaboration from 23 national public and private sector partners. To produce new and local planters CIMMYT is also ready to collaborate with some public and private partners, CIMMYT Country Representative and AIP Project Leader, Imtiaz Muhammad told the attendees of the meeting.

Dr. Ghulam Ali said focal person for AIP and PARC, said while addressing the event that resource-conserving crop management technologies can augment productivity of farm crop. He also thanked CIMMYT and its national partners for developing and spreading techniques of crop management to the farming communities of Pakistan.

Imtiaz Hussain, Cropping System Agronomist, informed the audience that conservation agriculture techniques for instance zero tillage and ridge planting are being delivered in the country under the AIP project.

CIMMYT is further collaborating with local manufacturers for the planting of different crops in KPK to produce zero-tillage Happy Seeder (to plant wheat after combined rice harvest); multi-crop planter for Dry Seeded Rice (DSR) and push row planter for maize.

Hussain further explained that CIMMYT has trained the local farmers in fields about no-till farming, ridge planting, and nutrient management. Under the AIP agronomy project, CIMMYT has trained 12,000 farmers by organizing farmer field days that can be worthwhile to farmers in saving water, avoid residue burning, reduce production costs and indirectly increase profits.