ISLAMABAD – Balochistan Agriculture Research Council (BARC), DirectorGeneral Abdul Hanan on Monday warned that the province was the mostaffected one by climate change in the country and time was running out toprevent its devastating impacts.

He said water level has gone down from 80 to 100 feet and agriculturesector was under severe threat for which revolutionary steps were requiredto be taken to save the province from a starvation.

The BARC was vigorously working to discover low water-consuming plants likepistachio, olive, and Saffron to resist climate change in the province.Hanan stressed the need to educate farmers to use modern growing methodsthrough awareness workshops and training sessions.

He said, “We should make farmers realize the importance of water andconvince them to adopt modern agriculture techniques like drip irrigationto fight scarcity of water.”

Low usage irrigation systems will allow a low flow water source to irrigatelarger number of plants and crops which must be primarily adopted by allthe farmers associated with agri-production sector, he suggested.

Answering a question, he said that the lack of processing is the mainreason for the declining date palm production. The BARC has establishedDates processing plant in Kherpure. Dates to be dried inside tunnels wouldbe the low-cost process other than by drying dates in sunlight, he added.

Hanan said plantation of more and more fruits tree was important to reducefood insecurity and it will also help earn revenue by exporting the productto the potential countries.

He said the demand for pulses was increasing day by day and there was aneed to develop varieties with higher yield potential that respond toimproved management practices and to motivate farmers so as to meet theincreasing demand of this edible item.

“BARC is also working on wheat drought resilience to find feasiblesolutions to prepare the province fight against the impacts of globalclimate change in the years ahead”, he added.

He said the provincial government was coordinating with BARC to takeeffective steps for the betterment of agriculture sector in Balochistan forthe sake of enhancing production of food grains in the province.

Hanan, however, regretted that the BARC was not able to complete itsongoing projects for want of financial resources and imbalancedadministrative power sharing.