SARGODHA: (Parliament Times) The College of Agriculture, University of Sargodha on Tuesday organized a one day seminar on “Vegetables Seed Production: Challenges & Opportunities” to accelerate research activities and to achieve desired goals through bridging gap between growers, producers, manufacturers, distributors and retailers.
The seminar was organized by the department of Plant Breeding and Genetics in which eminent vegetable botanists, researchers, academia, faculty and number of students participated.
The seminar discussed farm characteristics, market characteristic, production problems, marketing problems and overall situations of the vegetable seed sectors.
The seminar argued that vegetable seed sector have faced multifaceted problems and farming vegetable seeds in harsh condition with limited access to factors of production, collection centre, seed testing facilities, market information and incentive schemes that are prerequisite for making vegetable seed growers more competitive in the market.
Dr. Saeed Ahmad Shah Chishti, Vegetable Botanist from Ayub Agricultural Institute, Faisalabad delivered a lecture on Production and marketing problems in vegetable seeds and current marketing channels. He informed the seminar about the technical issues of vegetable seeds and said ‘there are limited numbers of hybrid variety, lack of assured quality seeds and high price of imported quality seeds are the challenges facing by the farmers.
He said owing to affordability issue, lack of awareness and other factors, farmers were using impure local vegetable seeds which would result in huge economic loss to them.
Dr Amir Saeed, assistant professor of Pir Mehar Ali Shah University of Agriculture informed the students about different types of seeds and their production including open pollinated seeds, Hybrid seeds and genetically modified seeds.
Assistant research officer of Vegetable Research Institute, Faisalabad urged to produce on-farm vegetable seeds that would save the huge amount being spent on importing seeds. He vowed to explore the market options for the smallholder vegetable seed producer.
Dr Muhammad Afzal, Dean Faculty of Agriculture and principal College of Agriculture Dr Ijaz speaking on the occasion said that promoting and strengthening the agriculture sector has been a primary priority of the Dr Ishtiaq Ahmad, Vice Chancellor Sargodha University. They added that horticulture remains one of the major sub-sectors of the agricultural sector.
At the end Dr Afzal and Dr Rasool distributed the participatory certificates among the guest speakers and students.
