Driving Food Security: The Crucial Role Of New Seed Varieties
Imran Nazir Abbasi
Islamabad: Given the historical significance of our agricultural sector as the cornerstone of our national economy and food security, a crucial pivot towards modern agricultural methods and embracing innovative seed varieties becomes imperative.
With a population exceeding 240 million, imminent food security challenges loom large. This necessitates urgent action from authorities and policymakers to initiate novel research endeavors aimed at developing higher-yield crops.
Despite the collaborative endeavors of agricultural scientists and policymakers in engineering hybrid seeds crucial for fulfilling our domestic food needs and their widespread distribution among farming communities, the prevailing situation starkly contrasts these efforts.
Growing population, coupled with changing weather patterns, resource scarcity, rapid pests, and disease attacks on various crops of vital importance, are major challenges to indigenously coping with the food requirements of our populace.
As the world population is also forecast to reach 9 billion by 2050, agricultural production the world over would be under much stress with prices of these commodities increasing locally and globally. Therefore, it is direly needed to explore new climate change-resistant varieties with better produce before any food catastrophe, ensuring sufficient investment in research and development projects.
“To develop climate-resilient, high-yielding, short-statured, early-maturing varieties of wheat, rice, sugarcane, and cotton, the government has launched the Prime Minister’s Agriculture Emergency Programme with a cost of Rs 15.789 billion,” said Imtiaz Ahmed Gopang, Food Security Commissioner at the Ministry of National Food Security and Research.
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“The initiative is aimed at introducing innovative technologies of crop production to conserve water, reduce post-harvest losses, and enhance per-acre crop output of rice, wheat, maize, and sugarcane to economically empower local farmers and enhance their farm income,” Gopang said.
He informed that in the current fiscal year, several projects have been initiated for the uplift of the agriculture and livestock sectors under the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP 2023–24).
These projects, he stated, include cage cluster development projects, commercialization of potato tissue culture technology, the establishment of a consumer-sourcing seed authenticity system, and the strengthening of the labs of the Federal Seed Certification and Research Division.
“The government has also allocated funds for creating a plant breeders rights registry, strengthening the DUS examination system, and the establishment of seed certification services in Southern Balochistan, besides initiating the National Oilseed Enhancement Programme,” Gopang said.
At the same time, productivity enhancement projects of rice, sugarcane, and wheat, besides promoting research for productivity enhancement in pulses and promotion of olive cultivation on a commercial scale, have also been started.
“The initiatives in the agricultural sector resulted in enhanced wheat productivity,” said Dr Muhammad Yaqoob, Project Director of the Wheat Productivity Enhancement Project of the National Agriculture Research Center. “This time wheat production grew by four million tons with an overall financial benefit of around Rs 400 billion.”
The project to increase the productivity of wheat and reduce the production gap was launched with a cost of Rs 30,455.353 million, with the federal government’s share comprising Rs 5,632.774 million, provincial governments sharing Rs 12,526.591 million, and farmers and service providers’ component as Rs 12,295.985 million.
Under the project, he said about 9,800 germplasm acquisition, distribution, and evaluations were made with 180 NUWYT/adaptability trials at various locations, 620 quality wheat seed production tests, and 8,000 germplasm development and evaluations. Moreover, 2,000 elite lines were developed and tested, 5,000 genotype screenings were conducted against wheat diseases, 800 germplasm screenings for drought and salt heat tolerance, and 18 wheat characterization protocols.
Similarly, under this project, the best varieties of seeds, fertilisers, and weedicides were subsidised by 50 percent, including the farmers’ machinery, with the federal government’s share at Rs. 3750.660 million, provincial governments at Rs 7568.102 million, and farmers and service providers at Rs. 4470.640 million.
“For the first time in the country’s history, during the years 2021–22, not only did rice production increase to 9.32 million tons, but its exports also touched US$ 2.5 billion,” informed Project Director Rice Dr Ashiq Rabbani.
He said local rice production increased from 2.4 to 2.6 tons per hectare, with its production showing an increase of 12 percent at project sites. “Although 2500 litres of water are required for one kg of rice crop, through Alternate Wetting and Drying technology, we can save 45 percent of the water, benefiting farmers Rs 5000 to 8000 per acre in terms of electricity and fuel cost by reducing methane gas emissions.
Modernising agriculture demands the urgent adoption of resilient seed varieties amid population growth and climate shifts. Collaborative investment, government initiatives, and technical integration are pivotal for sustainable food security and increased crop productivity.
Meanwhile, the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), in its 2023 edition of the State of Food and Agriculture (SOFA), has revealed that the hidden costs of current agri-food systems have reached $10 trillion annually, nearly 10 percent of the world’s GDP.
This edition covered 154 countries focusing on hidden costs in health, environment, and society and revealed the total quantified hidden costs for Pakistan in the agrifood system at approximately $161.8 billion, categorising them into environment ($28.9 billion), social ($20.9 billion), and health ($112 billion).
Therefore, it is the most urgent duty of the authorities to focus on this sector promptly to enhance agricultural productivity for our economic sustainability and meet the upcoming food security challenges.
Imran Nazir Abbasi is an APP reporter stationed in Islamabad. This feature is released by APP. The reporter and the organisation are solely responsible for the information and figures contained in this report.
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