ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Road Group on Wednesday introduced advanced harvesting to control canola crop loss in Bhakkar district of Punjab. Evyol Group offers high-quality canola seeds produced by Wuhan Qingfa Hesheng Seed Company in a joint venture with a Chinese company to Pakistani farmers.
Canola HC-021C Qingfa contains 0.7 percent erucic acid and 15 mm/g glucosinolate, which are respectively 2 percent and 30 mm/gm lower than the world level. That is why the canola variety in China is called “00” because it has the most dangerous content, said Zafar Iqbal, head of seed certification of the Ministry of Roads, in a speech to farmers and journalists.
Zafar said the loss was between 200 to 400 kilograms per hectare. “. He said, the optimum yield of HC-021C is around 1500-1600 kg per hectare.
In the next step, he said, the Chinese partner will send small pressure machines to farmers to extract canola oil at home.
Zafar said Pakistan imported 4.4 million tonnes of edible oil worth about $3.8 billion.
Chinese varieties of canola can bridge this gap and store valuable foreign reserves for Pakistan, besides increasing profits for local farmers, he said.
“We started selling HC-021C seeds in 2019.
So far, more than 100,000 hectares have been planted. Our target is 12.5 million hectares to make Pakistan self-sufficient in edible oil,” he said.
