Pakistan Agriculture Research Council (PARC) is all set to introduce four new seed varieties of long and extra long grain rice to enhance per-acre crop output and farm income, particularly the income of medium and small farmers.
The development of new verities would help in yielding about 80-120 mounds of rice per-acre as against the conventional verities, which was providing 40 to 50 mounds per-acre, said Chairman Pakistan Agriculture Research Council Dr Ghulam Muhammad Ali.
Talking to APP here on Tuesday, he said that these high-yielding seed varieties were cultivated over three different location on test and trail basis and initial results of uniform yield trails were showing encouraging trends while in some locations the output crossed 105 mounds per-acre.
The newly developed varieties are insect resistant, high yielding and would help to enhance local exports of long grain and extra long grain rice, he said adding that work on development of high yielding seed verities of wheat, maize and sugarcane were also in progress.
Dr Ali further informed that PARC had also introduced 04 varieties of high-yielding banana seeds for farmers of Sindh, which enhanced output to 45 tons per-hectares.—APP
