Haryana to achieve wheat sowing target this year

Introduce fungicidal solutions for seed protection.

Wheat sowing in Haryana continues on an upward trajectory as the state agriculture officials maintain they are on due course to reaching the set target for wheat sowing in the state.

As against 24,72,000 hectares area under wheat last year, this year the area under wheat in Haryana is pegged at 24,65,000 hectares.

Agriculture officials maintained around 24,00,000 hectare area has already been brought under wheat till date as they were anticipating reaching the target.

Haryana is the third largest wheat producer and second largest wheat contributor to the central pool. To help farmers prevent seed-borne diseases, the state government this year has introduced fungicidal packs inside the certified wheat seed packs.

By this method every ‘certified wheat seed’ whether made by government agency or private agency would have fungicide provided with instruction mentioned for the benefit of farmers on directions to use the same.

Earlier as well, the certified seeds supplied to the farmers had fungicidal packs but that was mainly done by the government agencies as private seed agents avoided following the practice.

This year, however, on directions given by state government certified seeds’ agents both in the government as well as in the private domain have been directed to distribute fungicidal packs along with certified seeds with instructions clearly mentioned on how to treat the seed.

To allay the fear of the private ‘certified seed’ agents of incurring extra costs for the fungicide solutions, the state government has decided to bear the extra cost for fungicidal solution placed inside the packs.

According to the agriculture officials, the biggest advantage of fungicidal seed treatment is to control soil- and seed-borne diseases.

The treatment according to these officials would not only put a check on the such diseases in the wheat plant but also help control surface-borne pathogen attack on the wheat.

The state agriculture officials maintained it has many a times observed the chances of wheat consignment procured are rejected because of the presence of fungal pathogens. The fungicidal seed treatment would help eliminate the chances of pathogen attacks.

On account of good rainfall Haryana is eyeing 1,14,00,000 metric tonnes production of wheat this year, comparable to last year’s target.

The increase in wheat area for late sowing (which is 30 per cent area this year compared to 20 per cent last year) could, however, pose some problem for the productivity.

Even last year, though the wheat yield was pegged at 1,14,00,000 metric tonnes, it actually was measured at 1,05,00,000 metric tonnes.