Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (Parc) is actively involved to develop new varieties of sugarcane to help overcome shortage of sugar in the country. "We are working diligently to develop new varieties of sugarcane and have already developed varieties like HSF 240, SPF 213, HSF 242, SPF 234, Thatta 10, CP77-400 and CPF 237 to achieve this objective, a senior scientist at National Agriculture Research Centre (Narc) Shahbaz Ahmed told newsmen.
"The success of these new varieties depends on how Pakistani farmers respond to them, and whether they adopt them in large numbers or not; as these varieties require lot of investment for their maintenance, and that is the reason they are presently being cultivated by rich farmers," he remarked. These breeds, according to scientists, are sowed both in autumn as well as in spring seasons.
These varieties are cultivated in Sindh, particularly in lower Sindh, during autumn in the month of September, while in Punjab they are cultivated during spring season in the months of February and March, Shahbaz elucidated. He said scientists were also working to promote cultivation of sugar beat crop instead of sugarcane particularly among the farmers of Sindh and Punjab, as the former needed less water for its growth, and was more profitable for the farmers.
However, he informed, the culture of cultivation of sugar beat crop had not really developed among farmers despite best efforts being made by the scientists of Parc in this regard. "The issue might be linked with less number of sugar beat crushing plants in the country", he added.
Besides this, Shahbaz added, a project had been launched jointly by Parc, Nuclear Institute of Food and Agriculture (Nifa) and Shakar Ganj Sugar Research Institute to develop a new variety of sugarcane which would be frost resistant, as frost had been a major problem in reducing the yield of sugarcane in recent years particularly in Punjab.