Pakistan
November 8, 2012

The meeting was organized with collaboration of and Dr. Muhammad Atiq Agricultural Officer in Agriculture Research station Bahawalpur. This meeting was facilitated by Dr. Muhammad Shafiq CEO Better Cotton.

The meeting was held in Panda Hotel Railway station Road Bahawal pur. There were about 20 progressive farmers who arrived from Multan Shujaabad, Lodharan, Chistian, Yazmaan Hasial pur Bahawalpur and other adjacent areas around Bahawalpur.

In start a movie of Indian experience with Bt cotton was showed to farmers followed by the questions answer session related to this movie.

A presentation regarding “New Era New crops Biotechnology Opportunities and challenges” was presented by Dr. Saifullah Khan. In the presentation various evolutionary steps to develop transgenic crops were discussed this was followed by novel crops plants with gene stacking and noval traits such as stress tollerence, molecular pharming, fortifications and many more.

Some fears regarding use of this technology were also discussed. Then question & answer session was mainly dominant about querries of growers regarding animal feeds especially the oil seed cake. Their observation was the animal did not like the oil cake extracted from bt cotton and this feed proved lethal in some cases. I told them in details that toxicity is due to aflotoxins present in oil cake due to fungus attack on cotton seed in the pressing mills due to rains and it is stored in open. This excess humidity encourages fungal growth.

This leads to accumulation of afflotoxin in the oil cake and leads to death of animals. Secondaly it was explains to them as bt protein is only active in basic condition while humen and animal stomach is acidic which inactivate the cryo proteins. Thirdly the taste of oilcake may be changed due to bt protein and animal will soon adopt to it.

Some new development regarding moler-pharming/ Biopharming was also discussed with farmers. They were happy and suggesting to use media to disseminate this valuable information for larger masses.

Another important thing discussed was Resistance Management farmers were totally unaware of these things and are not practicing it in their bt cotton plantings in their field. Almost 98% farmers are growing bt cotton and are very happy of their results.

They also complaining about seed availability and variable seed prices and their quality as certified cotton seed system has collapsed and everyone is selling bt seed in Punjab.

As the cotton planting varieties and bt local strains cultivars Dr. Muhammad Atiq also gives talk .He discussed about land preparation application of fertilizers, which variety they should plant as early plantation, what should be plant to plant distance of each variety and which variety is early and which is suitable for late plantings.

Dr. Atiq discussed full production technology including controlling secondary pest attack seed dressing seed rate etc of local bt varieties and use of herbicide in southern Punjab.

Farmers were quite happy to receive all these valuable information and suggesting this type of meeting should be held quite frequently. At the end lunch was served to participants.

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Published: November 8, 2012