Islamabad
Minister for National Food Security and Research, Syed Fakhar Imam on Tuesday stressed the need for developing high quality varieties of seeds of cotton to boost output of the crop in the country.
Addressing inauguration of Cotton Productivity Enhancement Programme ICARDA here, the minister said the cotton crop has suffered a lot during the recent years due to climate change and substandard seed quality.
He said the production had gone down from over 12 million bales about a decade ago to only seven million bales.
The cotton leaf curl virus has worse effects on cotton production of Pakistan as goes to most of the countries in the world.
He said the collaboration with the US in developing quality cotton seeds would help Pakistan in boosting the production of the crop.
Chairman PARC Dr Azeem Khan on the occasion said due to collaboration with US “we have been able to receive quite a large number of Germplasm which are tested in Pakistan.”
