Farmers asked to take precautionary steps: heavy rains post great threat to crops

The Met Office has alerted the farmers to the expected heavy rains, asking them to step-up measures to safeguard their crops, livestock and farms from impacts of the deluge. It said that farmers of cotton and sugarcane should irrigate their crops as per need keeping in view the mostly prevailing dry weather and rising day temperature. Growers watering their crops through tube-wells should schedule irrigation with rains ahead.
"Farmers are advised to control further weeds growth at the present growing stages to stop any negative impact on crops. Weeds removing practices should be started soon after the rains," the office informed. Mainly dry and hot weather is expected in Punjab till July 10 with rains, duststorms and gusty winds at isolated places in Bahawalpur, DG Khan, Faisalabad, Rawalpindi, Lahore and Gujranwala divisions from till July 5 and from July 7 to July 9.
Very hot and dry weather is expected in most parts of Sindh with possibility of duststorms due to the sweltering heat and light rainfall is likely at isolated places including Hyderabad, Karachi, Mirpurkhas and Sukkur divisions between 7-10 July. In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, mainly hot and dry weather is expected with rain-thunderstorm at a few places in Kohat, Mardan, Malakand, Hazara and Peshawar divisions till 10 July.
Weather in Balochistan is expected to remain very hot and dry with rain and duststorms and gusty winds at isolated places in Zhob till 10 July, besides light rainfall at isolated places in Makran, Sibbi and Quetta divisions from July 7-10 July. Widely hot weather is expected in most parts of Gilgit-Baltistan with rain and thunderstorms at isolated places including Astore, Gilgit, Hunza-Nagar and Skardu till 10 July. While hot weather is expected in most parts of Kashmir with rains and thunderstorms at isolated places including Muzaffarabad, Kotli, Neelum and Rawalakot till 10 July.