FAISALABAD City News

‘Country losing 40pc produce

due to poor post-harvest management’

From Our Correspondent

FAISALABAD: The value-addition, post-harvest management, best varieties and vibrant marketing system for onion, chilli and tomato will not only help meet the domestic needs but also fetch huge foreign exchange by tapping export potential of the international market, said University of Agriculture Faisalabad Vice-Chancellor Dr Iqrar Ahmad Khan.

He was talking to a delegation of progressive farmers of the Sindh Agriculture Growth Project at Syndicate Room here. He said that the UAF scientists would help the Sindh Agriculture Department in production of best varieties and capacity building of the Sindh growers to avert the post-harvest losses. He said that the growers of Sindh were acing crisis this year for which modern marketing system needed to be formulated. He said that onions helped prevent heat stroke and other ailments and it was rich in phosphorus, calcium and carbohydrates. He expressed his concern that the country had imported tomatoes worth Rs 26 billion from India last year. He was of the view that the country was losing 40 per cent produce worth billions of rupees due to poor post-harvest management. He called for developing the post-harvest mechanism to increase the shelf life of the agricultural produces.

Talking about rice, he said that the rice demanded excessive water and Pakistan had been listed in water scare countries. He said that the steps were needed to address the issue at the national level. About cotton, he said that the cotton production had registered a decline of 35 per cent this year. He said that Pakistani dates were not getting their due share in the international market due to lack of the value-addition mechanism.

Speaking on the occasion, delegation member Dr Zulfiqar Yousfani said that normally chili was cultivated on 80,000 acres in Sindh but this year, it was cultivated on 200,000 acres and the surplus supply was creating problems for the growers. He said that the shelf life of onion and chilli was less for which the experts and researchers should come up with the viable solutions. Ghulam Mustafa Nagraj also spoke on the occasion.