ISLAMABAD: Pakistan can develop its agriculture sector and increase the yield by providing incentives to farmers to use hybrid maize seeds, WealthPK reports.
Agriculture is the second-largest economic sector of Pakistan after the textile and manufacturing sectors. Maize is the country’s most important cereal crop after rice and wheat. Hybrid seeds are grown on about 30% of the land utilised for maize cultivation in the country whereas open-pollinated varieties (OPVs) occupy 70% of the agricultural land. It shows that hybrid maize has a vast scope in Pakistan.
Zubair Ahmed, a scientific officer at the National Agriculture Research Centre (NARC), told WealthPK that in Pakistan, the price of hybrid maize seed is among the highest in South Asia.
Smallholder farmers in Pakistan are forced to grow open-pollinated forms of maize because they are unable to afford expensive hybrid seeds. “Since maize grows quickly and has the capacity to yield a lot of grains per unit area, this could help poor rural farmers to improve their standard of living and alleviate poverty,” said Zubair Ahmed.
He said that maize is mainly grown in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab. However, Sindh and Balochistan have also recorded a surge in maize cultivation in recent years due to the involvement of the private sector and development initiatives. –INP
