Agricultural research is imperative to enhance productivity of various crops for attaining better yield of food, feed and fibre for welfare of the population.
Its main objective is to produce more per unit area with improved quality and less cost, find better uses of existing and new products and reduce losses, including post harvest losses, official sources said here on Friday.
Pakistan inherited very few agricultural research institutions at the time of independence and there was no research institute at the national level and thus the agricultural research was considered as a provincial subject with research stations at regional level with no co-ordination.
The country has now established Pakistan Agricultural Research Council, which has research establishments in all the four provinces besides a multi-disciplinary and well equipped National Agriculture Research Canter at Islamabad. Besides federal government the provincial governments are also maintaining agricultural research institutes in different regions.
It is estimated that there are around 100 research institutes and 165 research stations or sub-stations in the provinces responsible to conduct research on different commodities and disciplines to solve farmers' problems and develop new technologies.
Besides the agriculture research institutes the country has four agricultural universities and six colleges where agricultural research is an integral part along with agriculture education. The extension services are essentially needed to transfer the technology developed at research institutes for increasing the productivity of different commodities.
The system mainly relies on personnel communication where the individuals are positioned from union council level to district level and carry on the message to individual farmers, which does not seen feasible.
The system lacks the mechanism of identification of emerging problems and prompt response to the technological needs of the farmers and feedback to research system. It has also a very weak linkage with technology development institutions as well as training of its staff for the modern technologies and use of modern communication tools, including the use of electronic media.
There have been some efforts to change modify the system. The training and visit (T&V) system and adaptive research models were used in selected districts of all the provinces but with a very limited success.
Thus a need has always been felt for over-hauling the system and putting it on modern scientific lines, which can utilise the modern information technology and having a role far behind a traditional preacher.
Recently, some maximisation programmes on crop commodities, including wheat, rice, cotton, sugarcane, pulses were launched with the co-ordination of all related agencies and use of electronic media, which proved quite successful and yields were substantially increased in project areas.
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