Rape and sunflower to be cultivated in Pakistan

The government has set a target to cultivate canola over 0.85 million hectares and sunflower over 0.77 million hectares during the current year in order to fulfil the local requirements of edible oil and reduce the reliance on imported oil.

During the period under review, the cultivation targets for rapeseed and mustard were fixed over 5.42 million hectares to produce 6.80 million metric tons of edible oil, said an official in the Ministry of National Food Security and Research.

Meanwhile, the seed cotton to be cultivated over 3.118 million hectares as production targets of the mentioned commodity was fixed at 4.015 million metric tons, he added.

He said that the government was providing different incentives to encourage the farmers to cultivate oil seeds to enhance the local output of edible oil to save foreign exchange, which was being spent on the import of oil including soyabean and palm into the country.

He said that under the PSDP 2024-25, the government has allocated Rs1,000 million for the promotion of olive cultivation on a commercial scale in the Pakistan phase-II project to enhance the output of edible in the country, adding that Rs1,600 million for the national program for enhancing command areas in barani areas.

In its annual development agenda, the government has earmarked Rs800 million for the national oil seed development program, whereas an amount of Rs700 million would be spent on professional capacity building in the agriculture national reforms, he added.

The government has also allocated Rs 600 million for water conservation in barani areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, besides allocating an amount of Rs199.865 million on the mainstreaming of mountain agriculture research centres for the promotion of high-value agriculture in Gilgit-Baltistan.