Experts for promoting less-water consuming crops in Barind region

RAJSHAHI, Apr 04 (BSS): Agriculture specialists stressed her on promotion of less-irrigation consuming cereal crops instead of depending on only Irri-Boro farming in Barind area.

They said, promotion of less-water consuming crops could be the effective means of mitigating the condition of water crisis in the Barind area.

The observation came at a day-ong farmers training titled 'Production of Quality Wheat and Paddy Seed and Cultivation of Less Water Consuming Crops' at Tanore upazila in the district.

The Barind Multipurpose Development Authority (BMDA) organised the training in association with its 'quality seed production, distribution and farmers training for crops production' project on Tuesday.

BMDA Chairman Dr Akram Hossain Chowdhury addressed the programme with Executive Engineer Habibur Rahman Khan in the chair. Director of Wheat Research Centre Dr Naresh Chandra Deb Barma, Country Director of SYMMIT-Bangladesh Dr Mahesh Kumar Ghatala, Project Director ATM Rafiqul Islam and Senior Scientific Officer of Bangladesh Agriculture Research Institute Dr Shakhawat Hossain also spoke.

Dr Naresh Chandra mentioned there are enormous scopes of increasing the acreage of various low-water consuming crops like wheat, black gram, sesame, lentil, maize and pulse in the high Barind tract.

He told the farmers that wheat could be cultivated on seven to eight bighas of land with same amount of irrigation-water needed to irrigate one bigha of Boro rice through soil moisture utilisation and the best uses of modern technologies.