BEIJING: Pakistan is aiming to reduce its soybean import bill by 50% in next five years by using inter-cropping technology, promoting soybean cultivation and improving its processing and value addition.
As the local soybean production in Pakistan is much lower than the total national annual consumption So Muhammad Ali Raza, post-doc of Sichuan Agricultural University (SAU) and Director of National Research Centre of Inter-cropping, Islamia University Bahawalpur ,Said”To get out of this situation by enhancing our local soybean production using strip intercropping technology, which has globally proven to be the technique for enhancing crop production in the face of decreasing cultivation in a sustainable manner”,
At the meeting, China Economic Net (CEN) He made these remarks at a soybean research and cultivation promotion and planning meeting. Strengthening soybean research, promoting soybean cultivation in Pakistan and improving soybean processing and value addition .
More Over He said,
“In last autumn, from Aug. to Dec. 2021, I adopted this technology on 40 hectares of land. In the end of the season, I got 1.8 tons of soybean and 2.5 tons of maize per hectare,”
Since 2018, successful maize-soybean strip inter cropping technology trials have been continuously conducted in Sindh and Punjab. At the meeting, Dr. Muhammad Ali Raza, Dr. Zaheer Ahmad In-charge of soybean cell of University of Agriculture Faisalabad (UAF) and Hafiz Saad Bin Mustafa, Research Scientist at Directorate of Oilseeds, Ayub Agriculture Research Institute (AARI), presented their achievements on maize-soybean inter cropping. Positive feedback was also given from agricultural enterprise CEOs and local progressive farmers in the meeting.
Source : APP
