Over 100 rice farm field has been visited by traveling rice seminar across Pakistan, along with few outlets of different seed producing companies.
PARC and Chines Yuan Longping High-tech Agriculture Company designed the traveling seminar to travel in all the four ecological zones, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab, Sindh, and Balochistan.
The activity was a month-long having a group of hybrid rice researchers from China including 12 scientists that have also visited rice farms and fields, said Programme Coordinator and Member Plant Science in Pakistan Agriculture Research Council (PARC) Dr. Anjum Ali.
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He said that this joint initiative aimed to improve per acre crop productivity, increase profitability and produce surplus commodity for exports heightening.
China- Pakistan have decided to work together for conducting joint awareness programmes to adopt hybrid rice seeds and enhance local rice output, he added.
He informed that 30 Pakistani agriculture scientists, selected from all the four provinces and Chinese scientists had trained them. They will train members of provincial field extension departments on hybrid rice cultivation.
To discuss the issues and challenges in promotion of hybrid rice seed they had organize road-shows and field visits across the rice-growing areas, he added.
He further informed that Chinese researchers have recently developed a revolutionary hybrid rice seed that would help Pakistani farmers to enhance per acre yield significantly.
The new rice seed variety would produce surplus, from now country would be able to export more rice for exporting to other countries, he added. The seminar concluded next month to estimate local hybrid seed requirements for different regions and display hybrid rice varieties, he commented.
He said that in addition, activity will be helpful in capacity building of the local experts across the country to promote the hybrid rice techniques