The country's revised cotton production target, fixed at 11.6 million bales, will be achieved easily, said cotton research experts here on Wednesday. Talking to APP, Director, Central Cotton Research Institution (CCRI) Muhammad Arshad and Director, cotton research station Punjab Dr Muhammad Iqbal Bandesha said that the revised target was easily achievable.
They said that cotton arrivals till February 1,this year were registered at 10.644 million bales and arrival of another one million bales was not a problem. These experts said that earlier the cotton output target was 14.4 million but due to massive attack of mealy bug and a moderate onslaught of cotton leaf curl virus the target had to be lowered twice-first to 12.6 million bales and then to 11.6 million bales.
Meanwhile, president of Farmers Organisation for Progress (FOP), Mian Mushtaq Ahmed, and general secretary Mian Mehtab Hussain, urged the government to allow and patronise the cultivation of BT cotton whose productivity is well-established all over the world. "BT cotton requires less pesticide sprays and has more productivity, so the genie of mealy bug can only be fought out with the help of adopting BT cotton cultivation across the country".
A ginner-cum-progressive farmer, Mian Mushtaq said, "Its now unavoidable to adopt BT cotton, otherwise, Pakistan's cotton-based economy could suffer". Mian Mehtab Hussain, a science graduate and a green-house farming expert, said that some educated farmers were experimenting on their own to fight the devastating effects of mealy bug.
He said a progressive farmer in Hasilpur tehsil, district Bahawalpur, had obtained 60 maunds average yield of cotton by sowing it in March and harvesting it in the routine season of the last quarter of the calendar year. Both the farmers' reps urged the caretaker government to control spiralling prices of fertilisers as this price hike may affect the productivity of all the crops.