Punjab to increase acreage under pulses, oilseeds

Moga, Apr 8 (UNI) Under its diversificaiton drive, the Punjab Agriculture department has formulted an ambitious programme to further increase the area under pulses and oilseeds.

Under this plan, the area under pulses will be increased from 19,000 hectares to 45,000 hectares this year. With an increase in the acreage the production of pulses would go up from from 18,000 tonnes which was last year to 42,000 tonnes this year.

Stating this here today, joint director agriculture, Gurdev Singh Gill said that area under pulses will was being increased for the farmers. He said that there are indications that private buyers will be playing important role in buying pulses in the state.

Similarly area under oilseeds is proposed to be increased from 13,500 hectares last year to 25,000 hectares this year. This would increase the production of oilseeds by more than 16,000 tonnes over the last year.

According to Dr Gill private players like the Rattan Tata Trust was actively working in collaboration with the farmers for growing groundnut on 250 ares of land in five villages of Hoshiarpur district and 300 arecs in 10 villages of Sangrur distrit.

Dr Gill said that to provide quality fertilisers, seeds and insecticides, the agriculture department was keeping a check on these items. He said that 44 samples of fertilisers out of 3423 samples were found substandard by the department.

Similarly 256 samples of seeds and 119 of insecticides were found substandard.

UNI