Daily Times

Director General (DG) Agriculture (Farm & Training) Punjab Dr Ishtiaq Hussain has said that tunnel cultivation is imperative to cater to domestic food requirements amid the challenges of climatic change.

He was addressing a meeting at Ayub Agricultural Research Institute (AARI) here on Monday. He said that climatic changes had posed severe risk of food security in the country. Therefore, the agricultural scientists should introduce new seed varieties which should be not only climate resilient but also give maximum production amid harsh weather conditions.

He also stressed the need to adopt tunnel cultivation for vegetables and said that this technique could help in cater to domestic food requirements at a large extent.

He said that cultivation of summer vegetables was not possible in open field during winter in Punjab. Therefore, the growers should use tunnel to grow cucumbers, tomatoes, green chilli, capsicum, gourd (Ghiya Kaddu), pumpkin, bitter gourd (Karela), melon, water melon, Teendi, etc. successfully during winter.

He said that agri task force was constituted at government level which would ensure provision of high quality seeds of vegetables to the growers for increasing their yield.

Director Social Sciences of National Agricultural Research Center (NARC) Islamabad Dr Arshad Bashir said that the government was providing subsidy of billions of rupees for tunnel cultivation and drip irrigation as these technology would help a lot in increasing agri productivity in the country.

The growers should adopt latest technologies including tunnel cultivation for enhancing their production which would reciprocally cater to food requirements of burgeoning population in addition to mitigating financial sufferings of the farmers, he added.

The meeting unanimously approved Production Plan for Tunnel Vegetables 2023-24 after some amendments.

Deputy Director Plant Protection Faisalabad Region Dr Amir Rasool, vegetable experts Dr Saeed Ahmad Chishti, Kashif Nadeem, agronomy expert Muhammad Ashiq, fertilizer expert Dr Zia Chishti, Assistant Professor University of Agriculture Faisalabad (UAF) Dr Muhammad Owais Ghauri, Deputy Director Adoptive Research Punjab Lahore Dr Javaid Ahmad, Assistant Director Information & Film Muhammad Ishaq Lashari and others were also present in the meeting.