Rabi wheat target fixed at 28.4m tonnes
The high-powered Federal Committee on Agriculture (FCA) met on Thursday to set production targets for Rabi crops for the 2022-23 season and fixed a wheat production target at 28.4 million tonnes, to be grown on an area of 9.3m hectares. The wheat production target for Punjab has been fixed at 21m tonnes, while Sindh’s target has been fixed at 4m tonnes. The target for Sindh has been set in anticipation that the flood water will recede from the crop fields during the sowing season. Target for Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa is 1.8m tonnes, and 1.57m tonnes for Balochistan. The targets for gram, potato, onion and tomato have been fixed at 560,000 tonnes, 6029,000 tonnes, 2422,000 tonnes and 622,000 tonnes, respectively. The committee meeting, presided over by Minister for National Food Security and Research Tariq Bashir Cheema, was informed by the Federal Seed Certification and Research Department that the availability of certified wheat seed had increased by 14pc as compared to the last year.