As many as 50,000 acres of land would be brought under olive cultivation all across the country during the next five years as the Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (PARC) is set to take extraordinary measures to promote olive culture in Pakistan.
The target for this year has been set for planting olive saplings over 8,000 acres of land across the country, the participants of the planning meeting were informed at the PARC headquarters.
The meeting was chaired by PARC Chairman Dr Iftikhar Ahmad while PARC Member Natural Resources Division Dr Nadeem Amjad and project in-charges of all the provincial components were also present on the occasion.
Addressing the meeting, the PARC chairman said that free olive plants and olive processing facilities would be provided to the farmers to promote an olive culture in the country and reduce dependence on imports for which the national exchequer had been spending billions of rupees.
The chairman emphasised the developing and strengthening of the specialized nurseries to produce indigenous olive plants at scale to meet the farmers’ demand and plantation targets.
Dr Nadeem Amjad praised the pace of work as well as the planning strategy developed by the Federal Project Management Unit, PARC in promoting olive cultivation all across the country.
Earlier, National Project Director, Olive, Dr Nasir Mahmood Cheema briefed the participants about the working plan to achieve the targets of the project. He said that eight olive oil mills of large and medium capacity would be installed this year for processing olive fruit. He said a mother olive orchards would be established at NARC with sixty different olive cultivars, plant varieties produced in cultivation through selective breeding , for provision of true to type propagation material to develop indigenous plants.
Specialized manpower would also be developed for various aspects of olive cultivation, he said, adding that the private sector was being encouraged to promote value added olive products. He said that two companies were already working in this sector with the efforts of Federal Project Unit, PARC. Through such initiatives the country could achieve the national goals of increasing the production of domestic produced edible oil, he said.