Agriculturists at a International Conference on "Climate challenges and its impacts on Agriculture" have underscored the need for adoption of more cohesive and integrated approaches to tackle the growing climatic implications, which need to take preventive measures by collectively.
They said that climatic change is biggest threat of the entire world in generally, particularly to the most potential agriculture sector, which must be ended by joint efforts. The speakers regretted that current strategy was ineffective to cope with climatic challenges in context of impeding vulnerability of natural disastrous to the agriculture sector, and its dramatic impacts causes low productivity and created several others issues to yield cash and high quality crops.
"Different seasonal crops were much affected with the changing weather environment whereas the low production is making difficulties to meet the increasing local needs and demands of foods, they pointed. They stressed that cohesive policy should be designed to cope with the growing climatic hazardous to most potential Agriculture sector of the country.
The three-day International Conference on titled Climate Change: A Challenge for Agriculture organised by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Agriculture University in collaboration with Higher Education Commission. The University Vice Chancellor, Professor Dr Khan Bahadur Marwat formally inaugurated the mega event on climate change here on Monday. Delegates, comprising on agriculturists, experts on climatic issues, and relevant organisations from India, China, Japan, Germany, and across the country were participating in the conference, which could continue three-day in the university.
The keynote speakers at opening session were included Professor Dr Akihiro Isoda, Chairman CNP Sciences Division, Chiba University, Japan, and Director Rumgui Agriculture and Environmental Institute for Central Asia, Dr Abdul Mujeeb Kazi, Program Leader from Wheat Wide Crosses & Cytogenetics, Dr Farhatullah, chief organiser and Dr Zahoor Swati and others.
The speakers while addressing at inaugural session emphasised that collective strategy could be designed to handle the increasing climatic issues to the agriculture sector. They viewed the natural disastrous and climatic changes are the root causes behind the low agriculture productivity and yielding of cash crops. There are different crops, fruits, and other water intensive crops like sugarcane and cotton were the worst affected by the climate change, they maintained.
The participants said that the climate change will lead to changes in growth cycles of various microbes, pests, insects and fungi, saying that the rapid climatic changes are making difficult to maintain current yield levels in cross-pollinated crops (maize) and several fruits and fodders. Whereas, they said that the production of honey might also be affected as bees are likely to migrate to higher altitudes.
Similarly, the speakers pointed out that the locust and stem rust will cause greater damage to crops with rise in temperature and humidity, adding that changes in nitrogen-fixing bacteria may affect soil fertility. "We need to understand what man-made change (largely caused by the developed world) means to us", they stressed, added that in-depth knowledge in this regard is needed for the prosperity and health of the country.
The speakers underlined that the extreme weather conditions in droughts, severe winters, localized imbalance of oxygen-carbon dioxide percentages, underground water shortages are directly affect hydel power, food, agriculture, health and a host of other sectors. Despite a raised awareness level in Pakistan, a cohesive approach is amiss.
Dr Akihiro Isoda, Chairman CNP Sciences Division, Chiba University, Japan, gave a detailed presentation on "Improvement of Crops in a Changing Climate" at inaugural session. He in his presentation raised different technical issues, which were damaging the crops and suggested that the farmers should adopt modern harvesting tools and methods to cope with the growing climatic issues to the agriculture sector.
Dr Khan Bahadur Marwat, Vice Chancellor also spoke on the occasion, raised different climatic issues damaging major crops, saying that the due to not proper following remedial steps productivity is lowering with every year. He asked the agriculturists and farmers to learn from the changing practices in developed world for coping with natural issues, stressed that intensive research need to the underground water level in the country. Dr Khan Bahadur suggested that the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) should be made responsible to spearhead all-important scientific and managerial activities to keep the country at par with the international standards.
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