ISLAMABAD – The All Pakistan Textile Mills Association (APTMA) has offered to finance local research institutions for boosting the country’s annual cotton output from 11 million bales to over 16 million bales, an official source said.
This was offered by representatives of APTMA, Gohar Ijaz and Shahzad Ahmed Khan, at the first meeting of the cotton committee. The committee is required to recommend ways for increasing cotton output. The meeting was chaired by former minister for Agriculture Nazar Gondal and was attended by incumbent Agriculture Minister Mir Israrullah Zehri, Textile Minister Makhdom Sabahuddin, Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Dr Nadeem-ul-Haq and agriculture and textile secretaries.
The meeting was informed that rise in cotton output was hampered due to low fund availability for research institutions. Pakistan is importing nearly two million bales every year to meet requirements of the local industry. The source said that the president was keen to address demands of textile millers and called for an immediate resolution of millers’ problems.
APTMA offered maximum financial support for the promotion of research – even patronising one of the cotton research centers. The Agriculture Ministry had drawn a cotton vision in 2006 that envisaged increasing the domestic cotton production to 20 million bales by 2015. The programme failed to take off as required additional financing for the cotton research institutions was not provided by the government.
The ministry proposed another plan to introduce BT cotton with the help of US giant Monsanto. However, the programme was on the hold as the US firm was demanding royalties, estimated to be over 20 billion per annum from the government as there were no intellectual property rights (IPR) legislation in the country.
The legislation, drafted by the ministry, on agriculture related IPRs, the Plant Breeders Rights Act is in limbo since 1999 when its bill was introduced in the parliament for approval. An official source said that major impediment in enhancing cotton production is the Cotton Leaf Curl Virus (CLCV) that surfaced in early 1990s.
Since then, local research institutions have not found any panacea against disease. However, he stated that research shows that the disease could be significantly reduced by crossing desi and commercial varieties. Other main threat to the cotton crop is of the white fly, especially in Punjab. The meeting noted that research work on developing new virus resistance varieties needs to be expedited and scientists should be offered special pay scales to improve their service structure.
It was decided that research institutions which introduce new varieties will be given a major share in the marketing rights apart from bonuses for individual scientists to promote research in the country. The provinces were advised to adopt better management practices as a short term measure to increase the per acre production of cotton in the country.
Pakistan Agriculture Research Council (PARC) was directed to import germ plasma of different cotton seed varieties to develop virus resistant varieties locally.
