Like many other developing countries of South East Asia, agriculture is the mainstay of rural economy of Pakistan as well. Nearly two-third of the country's population live in rural areas and an overwhelming majority of them are dependent on agriculture for their livelihood.
Agriculture contributes 23 percent to national income (GDP), and employees about 50 percent of the labour force. It is a prime source of raw materials for Pakistan's industries, notably the textile sector. The development of science-based agriculture production technologies is of utmost importance for moving forward and keeping pace with developing economies. Major goals of agricultural research include making Pakistan's agriculture: productive, profitable, competitive and sustainable.
Major areas of Council's research include: crops, horticulture and floriculture, agricultural biotechnology, farm mechanisation, natural resources, animal sciences, social sciences and agricultural informatics. PARC has assisted in developing more than 264 improved varieties of wheat, rice, pulses, maize, sorghum, millet, fodder, cotton, sugarcane, oilseeds and horticultural crops.
Major achievements of the Council in animal sciences' sector include livestock reproduction capacity enhancement from one to three offsprings per year through embryo transplant technology. Hydro pericardium vaccine production technology for poultry has been transferred to private sector with a success rate of 95%. Losses prior to the introduction of this vaccine were estimated at 75 to 80 percent. Annual financial savings during the past 10 years were approximately Rs 30 billion, due to this vaccine. PARC has played the major role in the diagnosis, and prevention of bird flu in Pakistan. Through the introduction of balanced concentrate feeds, milk and meat production has increased and production cost reduced.
Improved varieties of wheat, cotton, rice and sugarcane crops coupled with balanced fertilizer use have resulted in yield increases from 100-170%. Use of chickpea inoculums on large scale in Bhakkar (Punjab) area increased the chickpea yield by 45 to 65%.
The Cotton Leaf Curl Virus (CLCV) epidemics during 1992 94 caused serious havoc. Monetary loss only in 1992 was estimated to be Rs 2000 millions. PARC scientists on the way to manage the crisis have diagnosed and characterised the virus and its vector. Virus-free potato seed and banana plantlets have been developed by the PARC scientists working at its various institutes. Consequently, seed potato import has reduced to almost nil as compared to thousands of tons in 1980s. Another breakthrough was the introduction of virus-free banana saplings. The Bunchy-top virus had almost eroded banana plantation in Sindh in mid 1990s. Now, this plantation is being replaced by PARC produced virus free banana plantlets in Hyderabad, Thatta and Gharo areas. Hybrid seed production of maize, oilseeds, wheat, rice, cotton and vegetables is being researched in a big way.
In collaboration with Japan, PARC has established a, state-of-the-art plant genetic resources facility for conservation and exchange of germplasm including collection of seeds of all plants etc. In-vitro conservation facility of vegetatively propagated crops is also available in this institute.
PARC has also developed a state-of-the-art grain quality laboratory. The laboratory is ISO-17025 certified.
In order to minimise the indiscriminate and excessive use of harmful pesticides, PARC is promoting the concept of biological control of insect pests through Integrated Pest Management (IPM) programs for fruits and vegetables. PARC established bio-control laboratories in five sugar mills and provided technical assistance to another eight sugar mills to do so.
To reduce input costs and to produce health and environment-friendly crops, PARC has given special thrusts on organic wheat and vegetable production based on EM-compost and humic acid. Plants for production of biofertilizers and biopesticides have started production at NARC. Intercropping of vegetables on ridge cultivation is also being propagated. PARC has indigenized technology for all-season vegetable production. Work on plants suitable for bio-fuel production like Salicornia, Jatropha, Arind, Sarkanda, Sukh chan is in progress.
Under the visionary leadership of Dr Zafar Altaf, Chairman PARC, various innovative technologies like biotechnology, bioprospecting, dairy goats crossbreeding , mushroom development, efficient water harvesting, remote sensing, GIS, mitigation strategies for climate change, biofuel production, biodiversity conservation, dry rice farming organic certification, etc are being researched, perfected, tested, tried and extended.
Very recently, PARC has established two waste-water treatment plants for agricultural use through bio-remediation at NARC. Feasibility study of used-water treatment facility of Jamshid Colony, Benezirabad (Nawab Shah) with a capacity of 3 3.5 million gallon/day has been conducted. Similarly, establishment of PARC/NARC sub-research station at village Neela, Chakwal for demonstration of biological treatment of used-water and solid organic matter for integrated farming is also under consideration.
A campaign has been launched to plant fruit saplings and vegetables to cover the spaces available along road sides, green belts etc in the urban areas including households (backyards, front-yards and other empty spaces). An urban agriculture centre is being established at NARC through public-private partnership. Research work on high density fruit orchards is also in progress at NARC and at various locations of the country. Pakistan is a major tea importer. Tea import to the tune of Rs 12 to 14 billion per annum is quite disturbing and a challenge to all concerned in Pakistan. PARC has been working to enhance indigenous tea production in the country since 1980s. As a result of sustained efforts, the Council has established a big nursery with 1.5 million tea plants. Tea plantation has been established on more than 400 acres at farmers' fields. Farmers and NGOs' workers have been trained in tea cultivation technology. Green and black tea processing plants of 50 kg/day and 1 ton/day capacity, respectively have been installed and private sector is being encouraged to come forward in a big way to help increase the area under tea. An MoU was signed with a local company to promote the indigenous tea production and make the country self- reliant in tea. However, more work on this project is needed to make tea cultivation a sustainable and profitable venture for the farmers. Another remarkable achievement of PARC's research and development has been the introduction of European honeybees in Pakistan in the 1980s, which made Pakistan a leading exporter of honey in the region. Now, more than 300,000 bee colonies exist in Pakistan which increased honey production from 4 kg in 1982 to 28 kg per colony per annum in 2009. We also trained around 8000 farmers in modern beekeeping. Farm Machinery Institute (FMI) under PARC has designed, developed and modified variety of farm mechanisation technologies and transferred these to about 30 private sector engineering firms/companies for commercial production. The machines developed by PARC include reaper-windrowers, groundnut-diggers, paddy-threshers and sunflower-threshers. A rice transplanter has been designed, developed and introduced by PARC to suit the local socio-economic and agro-ecological conditions. It has given satisfactory performance in rice fields of Punjab and Sindh. It is being manufactured by Heavy Mechanical Complex (HMC), Taxila on commercial scale. Tractor mounted reaper-windrower, wheat drill, wheat straw chopper-cum-blower and mobile seed processing units have also been recently developed and introduced. Realising the importance of straw, FMI has developed wheat and rice clipper-cum-blower, facilitating the farmers to save the uncut and un-chopped wheat straw after combine harvesting of these crops. FMI has also introduced phosphate band placement fertilizer drill, which saves 50% fertilizer.
Covering diverse socio-economic aspects of agricultural research and a wide variety of production technology packages developed by PARC research scientists, the Social Sciences discipline takes care of agri-economics, agribusiness, socio-economics, biometrics, gender development and WTO opportunities and challenges for Pakistan's agriculture. A variety of surveys and studies are conducted every year to gauge the suitability and profitability of various agricultural technologies.
As a result, PARC has more than 100 off-the-shelf available technologies for immediate transfer to farmers through various mass media and technology transfer/extension channels. The new management has desired that the new technologies will be demonstrated at farmers' fields in more aggressive manner so that the technologies developed at PARC research stations disseminate fairly rapidly.
PARC has already established a network of Technology Transfer Institutes (TTIs) at Faisalabad, Tandojam, Peshawar, Quetta, Gilgit and Muzaffarabad for efficient transfer of developed technologies and generated knowledge. PARC management realises that the process of technology transfer will be successful if it is done through closed collaboration with the provincial extension departments. The emphasis is on development and dissemination of site-specific solutions and technology transfer according to local needs of the farming community. PARC has imparted training to about 15000 people (farmers, extortionists, junior scientists, technicians) through 750 organised training courses, published booklets/brochures (300), audios (160) and videos (300) programs, held exhibitions (60), seminars/workshops (70). More than 16000 farmers benefited by PARC helpline.
In this age of information technology where Internet and email has become a house-hold item, PARC also inaugurated its own web site in August 2000. It contains more than 500 pages with more than 160,000 hits by visitors from over 50 countries. The web site has both English and Urdu Sections to cater the information needs of a wide variety of clientele including scientists, researchers, policy makers, planners, students as well as farmers. The site contains 25 English and more than 100 Urdu commodity papers. As mandated, PARC has maintained a National Library for Agricultural Sciences at NARC with more than 25000 books/documents and about 1100 scientific journals.
In line with the new challenges in the WTO regime PARC has established a WTO- Food and Agriculture Related Matters (WTO-FARM) Cell in 2000. The Cell has conducted more than 50 workshops and seminars in close collaboration with key stakeholders across the country to create awareness of WTO regime for food and agriculture. It has also conducted research in this area and published 10 policy research papers, a training manual and a bulletin for farmers. Council has recently obtained post-graduate degree awarding status by establishing National University of Agricultural Sciences (NUAS) which will teach cutting-edge knowledge to students at M.Phil and Ph.D level.
PARC has registered a company, PARC Agrotech Trading Company (PATCO), to patent and commercialise the technologies, services and products developed and provided by the agricultural scientists. It has already started functioning.
(New Initiatives of PARC)
Dr Iftikhar Ahmad, Director General, NARC
Dr Imdad H. Mirza, Dr Javed Iqbal, PRMC, NARC
Sardar Ghulam Mustafa, Director PR & Protocol, PARC
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