LAHORE   -  Senate Standing Committee on Commerce has directed the National Agriculture Re­search Centre, the Ministry of Commerce (MOC) and the provincial governments to collectively prepare a plan to support HG1 variety of garlic, which has the po­tential of producing enough to put an end to Rs80 billion per annum import.

The plan will identify policy, invest­ment, training and other support mea­sures for which assistance is required from Export Development Fund (EDF) to increase NARC HG1 Garlic variety’s production and export surplus. This was disclosed at a seminar arranged by the Agricultural Journalists Association (AJA) here on Thursday. Pakistan Horti­culture Development & Export Company (PHDEC) Punjab Region’s head Jafar Ali, progressive growers, CEO of a seed de­velopment company Tariq Ismail Mayo and others addressed the event.

PHDEC Punjab’s regional head Jafar Ali speaking on this occasion said that his or­ganization was ready to extend assistance needed to promote HG1 garlic variety. He said it was the mandate of his organization to help promote the horticulture products and their export from Pakistan. He invited the growers and the companies involved in production of the above mentioned variety to come up with a plan and they would fund it from the Export Develop­ment Fund (EDF). Throwing light on their various projects, he said they were going to open their offices in different areas which were hub of any horticulture pro­duce such as chilli producing areas, mango producing areas etc so as to there should be no hassle for farmers to approach them and seek solution to their issues.

Tariq Ismail Mayo, CEO Agro Bridge (Pvt) Limited, said at present 577 farm­ers were sowing the variety on around 2,100-2,200 acres of land and if this fig­ure could be pushed to 20,000 acres to 25,000 acres in next three years, it would help our dependence on import of garlic from abroad. “At present we were import­ing around 60 per cent of our domestic need from different neighbouring coun­tries formally or informally,” he added.

He sent on to say that they were car­rying out research in collaboration with three different universities to bring down the cost of production of this va­riety making it more profitable for the farmers. He claimed that this variety had manifold production potential and it had best nutritional and medicinal value. He said they were working on it to make a “zero wastage” crop. “It can also help controlling the issue of smog.” He said stubble of rice could be used for mulch­ing the said garlic crop which would help stopping growth of weeds in it, contain moisture in the land and help better growth of bulbs of garlic. He said later these rice stubbles could be merged into land through use of rotavators and these were the best form of DAP fertilizer.

Muhammad Luqman, President Garlic Growers Association, said that total con­sumption of the garlic in Pakistan was around 300,000 tons per annum and ma­jor chunk of it was imported. He stressed for keeping the garlic crop more organic to make it acceptable in the internation­al market. He also called for promotion of value addition to ensure export, as it could not be exported in raw form.

Ali Raza Kharal, a progressive farm­er from Sheikhupura, termed the HG1 a promising crop to earn handsome profit. However, he stressed the need to sow at least 100,000 plants in an acre with distance of 5 inches between two plants to get 60 mm of fruit which was acceptable for domestic use. Hussnain Akhtar Virk, another farmer, speaking on this occasion called for educating the farmers that what crop they should sow according to the climatic and soil conditions of their area. He said educa­tion was essential for the growers in our country, as most of these have around less than 12 acres of land and they should be imparted knowledge of which crop was more profitable for them.