PARB arranges meeting on 'olive plant propagation, cultivation'

The Punjab Agricultural Research Board (PARB) arranged a consultative meeting on 'Olive plant propagation and cultivation' to discuss the problems regarding propagation and cultivation of olive plant, research update and future strategy.
Chief Executive PARB Dr Mubarik Ali was in the chair at the meeting, who threw light on importance of olives and potential areas of research, says a spokesperson of the Board here Thursday.
Dr Mubarik emphasised the need of production of olive seedlings on mass scale and their supply to common farmers at affordable prices, processing of olive fruit, oil extraction and other value added products.
Dr Mubarik also proposed for manufacturing of local olive oil extraction machine as the imported ones are very expensive having low capacity.
Dr Muhammad Tariq Director Barani Agriculture Research Institute (BARI) gave a comprehensive presentation highlighting olive research activities being carried out at BARI Chakwal.
He said Pakistan's import of edible oil stands at 2.20 billion $, largest import after petroleum. He further said there were two ways to increase edible oil production, one to increase area and production under soil seed crop and other to introduce new oil producing crops and trees.
"Oil tree has the potential to fill the gap," he added while briefing the participants of the meeting. Tree can be cultivated on barren, marginal and stony lands. Its productive age is more than two centuries as well as it is environment friendly and drought tolerant tree. He further said that normal propagation methods including cutting, air layering and grafting with rooting success is 30 percent, 21 percent and 24 percent respectively.
"BARI has conducted olive adaptability trials in most of the districts of Punjab and results are very encouraging particularly in Potohar region" he maintained.
Ghulam Idress Khan National co-ordinator olive, Islamabad showed his reservations on olive propagation through tissue culture technique and emphasised to increase cutting success rate. Some other participants also gave their presentations on different tissue culture techniques, standardisation of protocols and other methodologies involved in this technique. Most of the participants were of the view to encourage tissue culture propagation for olive plants on large scale, though its initial cost is comparatively expensive than cuttings but it can be reduced if expanded through commercialisation. Yaqoob Tahir from Izhar group offered his services for olive plants production on mass scale through tissue culture technique.