Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Minister for Local Govern-ment Faisal Amin Gandapur Friday said the provin-cial government was striving for the development of agriculture sector as it was backbone of the national economy.
He emphasized upon use of modern technology and novel research in agriculture to achieve self-sufficiency in food, saying that by adopting new techniques and research the province could witness prosperity.
He expressed these views during his visit to Agri-culture Research Institute Food Technology Section of the Department of Food Technology here. He visited different sections of the department and took special interest in processing dates through hybrid tunnel under ALP project and said that completion of this project would bring prosperity in the field of date production in the region.
The Food Technology Section was set up on the directives of the KP Minister for LG to discover new varieties of fruits, vegetables and plants under food technology and to research.
On the occasion, Dr. Shehzada Arshad Saleem, in-charge of Food Technology Section and World Award winning Food Technologist, took the Pro-vincial Minister on a tour of various departments of the Research Center.
During the briefing the Minister showed keen inter-est and commended the quality of research work done in Agriculture Research Institute especially Food Technology Section ARI Dera.
He said that modern research of Dr. Shehzada Ar-shad Saleem and his team not only made Pakistan famous all over the world, but also represented Pakistan in the best way in Saudi Arabia, UAE, Iran and African countries.—APP
