CABI is launching “PlantwisePlus Program”, which is aiming at to improve food security in the country through adoption of more sustainable approaches in food production.
Center for Agriculture and Bio-Science International (CABI) would establish two bio-control labs in order to reduce the use of fertilizers and pesticides, besides providing alternate hazard-free solutions to protect national ecological system, stop environmental degradations and produce safer food.
To this effect, CABI is launching “PlantwisePlus Program”, which is aiming at to improve food security in the country through adoption of more sustainable approaches in food production, besides helping small farmers to predict and prevent plants’ health threats.
Addressing a press conference here, Country Director CABI, Dr Muhammad Naheem Aslam said that the other objective of launching PlantwisePlus Program is to reduce crop losses and increase livelihood by bringing greater efficiency in plant health management to produce enough food to tackle growing population.
He informed that CABI was operating in many other countries and signed the agreements in Pakistan with the governments and agriculture extension departments of all four provinces, besides Gilgit Batistan and Azad Jammu and Kashmir.
Besides, the program was also operating in 35 other countries and it was also working in Pakistan since 2012, he said adding that bio-diversity labs were established and provided training to field extension workers in 36 districts of Punjab.
Meanwhile, the network of these biodiversity labs was extended to other areas of the country and were established 1,000 plant clinics across the country, which were providing advisory services to farming communities, adding that first quarantine lab also was established.
He said that under the PlantwisePlus project, all running components would be brought under one unit to support agriculture extensions and researchers, adding that digital tools are being developed including fertilizers calculator and development of pest risk analysis.
Since its launch in 2011, CABI’s Plantwise programme has been introduced to 34 countries in Africa, Asia and the Americas. The aim was to increase food security and improve rural livelihoods by reducing crop losses. This was achieved by establishing sustainable networks of local plant clinics, run by trained plant doctors, where farmers receive practical plant health advice.
Working in close partnership with over 170 in-country partners, Plantwise strengthened national plant health systems from within, enabling countries to provide farmers with the knowledge they need to lose less of what they grow.
Originally published at Urdu Point