FAISALABAD:Modern trends including mechanization, quality seed, and precision agriculture is the need of the hour to meet the food demands of ever increasing population, said Vice Chancellor (VC) University of Agriculture Faisalabad (UAF) Prof Dr Iqrar Ahmad Khan.
He was presiding over a meeting on “agricultural development” at the meeting room of his office. Managing Director FonGrow Gen (Retd) Tahir Aslam, Dean Faculty of Agriculture UAF Prof. Dr. Muhammad Sarwar Khan, Director ORIC UAF Dr Jafar Jaskani, Director CAS Dr Sultan Habib, Dr Asif Kamran, Dr Irfan Afzal, Dr Usman, Dr Saqib and FonGrow Senior Farm Manager Muhammad Zahid Aziz and others attended the meeting.
He said that the homeland needed to adopt mechanization in agriculture sector. He said that Cotton Leaf Curl Virus (CLCV) was a serious threat for cotton crop. “Therefore, we would have to shift towards high yielding varieties and machine picking mechanism,” he added.
He said that the university had cultivated such soybean variety on 100 farms on trial basis which had the ability to enhance its production manifolds.
He said that the jujube fruit had the great potential to be exported to China after it its value addition to earn heavy foreign exchange for the country.
Managing Director FonGrow Gen (Retired) Tahir Aslam said that with a mission to ensure food security and agriculture excellence, ‘we aimed to position Pakistan as a leading agricultural producer using modern farming techniques, research and development, and sustainable water management practices’.