ISLAMABAD -  Barani Agriculture Research Institute (BARI) Chakwal has installed an extra virgin olive extraction plant to produce world class olive oil.

The extraction plant has been imported from Italy with a total cost of Rs29.560 million, which has the fruit deleafing, washing system, crushing mill and transfer pump, Head of BARI Dr Ahmad Tariq said.

Talking to APP here on Wednesday, he said the initiative aimed at facilitating the growers as well as encouraging them to cultivate oil seed for enhancing edible oil production in the country.

He said the plant had the capacity of 500 kg per hour oil extraction and it was expected to extract about 10 ton of the olive during the current season starting from the third week of current month.

He informed that during the last year about 4 ton olive was extracted as the plant had capacity of extracting 50 kg per hour only. He said the olive trees had been planted over 3,166 acres of land in Potohar region of Punjab province to reduce dependence on oil imports and bring the marginal agriculture land under cultivation to alleviate poverty from the country.

As many as 428,000 olive saplings had been planted under the five year 2015-20 Olive Valley Project, he added. Under the project, as much as 15,000 acres of land would be brought under the olive cultivation by planting about 2 million olive saplings.

The main purpose of the project was to enhance the olive oil production by bringing the waste and marginal land under its cultivation, he added.

Reducing the reliance on imported olive oil to fulfil the domestic consumption as well as to encourage the local industry was the other purpose of the project, he added. He informed that the government of Punjab, in collaboration with the international development partners and donor agencies, had initiated a five-year 'Olive Valley Project', in order to enhance the olive oil production in the country. He said the Potohar Region was declared olive valley and olive plantation was started in six districts including Rawalpindi, Jehlum, Chakwal, Khoshab and Attock.

The government, he said, was providing free of cost olive plants to growers, besides 60 percent subsidy on the installation of drip-irrigation and 70 percent subsidy on the water resource development. He said under the project, rural women were also trained on producing by-products of olive like olive jam, pickle and oil to promote the industry. It may be recalled here that Pakistan has spent $1.748 billion on the import of about 2,409,220 metric ton olive oil in 11 months during the last financial year.