Islamabad, Nov 11: Chinese intercropping technology introduced in the year 2018 has been produced successfully to revitalize the agriculture sector back in Pakistan.
This year saw advanced efforts in fine-tuning and integrating the technology mostly in cotton production.
The National Research Center of Intercropping {NRCI} for the enrollment of farmers willing to use the technology use it in Maize, wheat, sugarcane and cotton farming.
In the next maize sowing season, NRCI plans to take intercropping demonstrations of maize soybean to other districts especially Punjab.
Some of the preliminary results have shown exemplary result where farmers in Punjab have obtained yields of 10-14 maund of soybean and 15-18 maund of cotton per annum from the same area of land on this regard Dr Muhammad Ali Raza, Director NRCI and International Research Fellow at Gansu Academy of Agricultural Sciences (GAAS) informed CEN.
This year, NRCI is encouraging cotton farmers to practice strip intercropping with Bt cotton and soybean from February next year.
The purpose of this effort is to increase production in Pakistan because both the hectarage and yield per hectare has reduced from 2014-2023.
Dr. Raza also stressed the importance of maximizing the performance of soybean rotation since farmers had lost much of their produce from infestations of whiteflies and pink bollworm.
Since the cultivation of Bt cotton and soybean inter cropping, farming can also realize higher soybean production while maintaining an on production of cotton.
Additionally, experts from Peking University have provided Pakistan with high-yielding maize and soybean varieties and specialized herbicides to control weeds in maize-soybean intercropping fields, according to Dr. Raza.
