The government has set a target to cultivate canola over 0.85 million hectares and sunflower over 0.77 million hectares during the current year in order to fulfil the local requirements of edible oil and reduce the reliance on imported oil. During the period under review, the cultivation targets for rapeseed and mustard were fixed over 5.42 million hectares to produce 6.80 million metric tons of edible oil, said an official in the Ministry of National Food Security and Research. Meanwhile, the seed cotton to be cultivated over 3.118 million hectares as production targets of the mentioned commodity was fixed at 4.015 million metric tons, he added. He said that the government was providing different incentives to encourage the farmers to cultivate oil seeds to enhance the local output of edible oil to save foreign exchange, which was being spent on the import of oil including soyabean and palm into the country.