Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) has evolved three new crop varieties, aimed at enhancing the agricultural production in the country.
These three varieties are in addition to 45 high-yield varieties of various food and cash crops evolved by PAEC and are fetching over Rs 6 billion additional annual income to the farmers, PAEC announced here on Friday.
PAEC'S Nuclear Institute for Agriculture, Tandojam has evolved the three new crop varieties, which are Bhitai for wheat, Mehk for rice and NIA-2004 for sugarcane.
The technical sub-committee for approval of varieties and techniques, government of Sindh in its meeting on August 30 unanimously recommended to the Provincial Seed Council for approval and release of these new varieties for general cultivation in the province.
The wheat variety Bhitai has resistance to all the prevailing races of leaf and yellow rust, has a high-grain yield, possesses high protein and gluten percentage and is capable of sustaining reduced irrigation.
It has the potential of 8 tons per hectare while the average yield ranges from 5 to 6 tons per hectare.
The new Mehk rice variety has a strong aroma, tolerance to insect pest and it gave grain yield of 3915 kg per hectare in 2002 and 4438 kg per hectare during 2003 in the national uniform rice yield trials.
Its pre-release performance (4463 kg per hectare) under farmers' fields manifested high promise.
NIA-2004 sugarcane variety is early maturing with high-sugar contents with resistance against prevailing diseases.
It has confirmed its superiority over the existing commercial varieties and has a potential yield at 174 tons per hectare.
Comments
Comments are closed.