Rains Spell To Benefit Wheat, Other Rabi Crops

Recent spell of rains will bring brought about positive impact on all crops sown during current Rabi season, besides helping to boosting their output in rain fed areas of the country

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 25th Nov, 2020 ) :Recent spell of rains will bring brought about positive impact on all crops sown during current Rabi season, besides helping to boosting their output in rain fed areas of the country.

It is also beneficial for human health, environment and livestock as it acts like a natural cleanser for environment to reduce dust particulars causing different allergies and strengthening the clean water resources for the animals consumptions, said Dr Gulam Muhammad Ali Member Plant Sciences in Pakistan Agriculture Research Council.

While, talking to APP here on Wednesday he said these rains would be largely beneficial for wheat, which is the major cash crop of the Rabi Season and vital source of staple food in the country.

These rains would be most beneficial for the growers of rain-fed areas and providing them required moisture for sowing the crop well in time as well as it would help in full germination of seeds to achieve maximum output during the season, he added.

Besides, it would also help exploit full potential of rain-fed areas where other crops including pulses, oil seeds and vegetables were also grown to fulfill the local needs.

Timely rains would help to bring more areas under wheat cultivation that would also help supplementing the national output, which was reduced during last sowing season, he remarked.

He further informed that wheat sowing during current season was expected to enhance by 2 to 3 percent in irrigated areas in the country, adding that increase in the minimum support price and incentive package for Rabi crop had encouraged the farmers to grow more crop during the season.

The rain fed areas contributes significantly in national output of wheat and favoring climate condition would help to achieve the set targets of the season, he said adding that rains would not only positively impact the wheat crop of rain fed areas, but it would have far reaching impact on the crop of irrigated areas.

Rains would help to augment the water resources, he said adding that it would bridge the deficiencies of water for irrigation and supplement the crop sowing as well as enhancing the local production.

He urged the farmers for cultivating the recommended seeds verities in order to maximize the per-acre yield to enhance farm income during the season.

Meanwhile, National Wheat Coordinator in National Agriculture Research Center Dr Sikandar Khan informed that wheat was cultivated over 1.5 million hectares of rain fed areas across the country out of total 9 million hectares, adding that Pothohar Region is depending on rains and some farmers had already cultivated on dry land.

He called upon the farmers to ensure timely cultivation of crops and use the recommend verities as according to their ecology in order to achieve maximum output to enhance profit ratio as well as making the country food safer and secure.

He recommended that farmers of rain fed areas of Punjab Province to sow recommended wheat seed verities including Pakistan 2013, Borlaug 2016, Ahsan 2017, Baranii 2016 and Fateh Jang 2016 in order to get maximum output during the season.

The verities including Bakhar Star, Akbar 2019, Fakhar-a-Bakhar, Ghazi 2019, Borlaug 2016 and Zencol 2016 were recommended for irrigated areas, he said adding that farmers of these areas could gain more output as compared the conventional verities.

Besides, he said that Benazir 2013, TD1, Nia Sarang, Nia Sunnari was recommended for irrigated areas of the Sindh province, adding that using the recommended seed verities would help to scale up the crop production to fulfill the demand.