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0.1 m acres earmarked for sunflower cultivation

RECORDER REPORT

HYDERABAD: An area of over 0.1 million acres has been earmarked for cultivation of sunflower in Sindh in 1999-2000.

This was stated at a meeting held under the chairmanship of the director-general agriculture extension Sindh, Aftab Ahmed Soomro, here on Thursday.

The meeting was attended by the representatives of Pakistan Oilseed Development Board and field officers of agriculture extension. The director general, agriculture extension directed the field officers to launch a campaign to motivate farmers for sowing sunflower on maximum area to achieve the target.

The PODB representative said that hybrid sunflower seed "sun-cross 42" imported from Australia was available at Rs 225 per kilo, which was cheaper than other seeds.

He further said that a meeting of the representatives of solvent extracting plants/factories has been convened on January 13, to finalise market mechanism and achievement of sunflower production targets.

He advised the growers to thresh and clean the sunflower production properly and maintain moisture content up to 9 percent and inert matter up to 2 percent.

The sunflower growers have also been advised to keep plantation at the spacing of 2.5 feet row to row and 9 inch plant to plant to get healthy crop.

The filed officers pointed out problems like non-procurement of sunflower produce from small growers, high rates of seed, non-availability of drilling and threshing machines and un-attractive sunflower support prices.

It was decided that the drilling and threshing machines will be repaired by PODB and made available to growers.