Vow to turn BD into food grain exporting nation

The five-day 'Annual Research Review' of the Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI) began Sunday with a vow to turn the country into a food grain exporting nation.
Agriculture minister Begum Matia Chowdhury inaugurated the programme held at BRRI Auditorium in Gazipur where she urged the scientists for developing more stress tolerant high yielding rice varieties (HYV).
She said:  "Domestic production could be increased significantly by using modern HYV seeds."
BRRI organised 'The Research Review 2012-13' where law maker Md Jahid Ahasan Rassel spoke as the special guest.
Executive chairman of the Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council (BARC) Dr Md Kamal Uddin, director general of the Department of Agricultural Extension Md Abu Hanif Mia were the guests of honour while agriculture secretary Dr S M Nazmul Islam chaired, a press release said.
Begum Matia said the effort to increase production will be continued to fulfill the people's nutritional need through attaining self-sufficiency in food production.
She also said internal food storage capacity will be enhanced to combat any disaster.
She advocated for increasing subsidy in fertilizer, seeds and irrigation and for providing agricultural loans at lower interest rate.
BRRI director general Dr Jiban Krishna Biswas presented the keynote which said BRRI developed 61 HYV rice varieties and 4 hybrid varieties.
"At present BRRI varieties cover 80 percent of the total rice area that accounts for 90 percent of the total rice production of the country" he said.
The most popular BRRI developed high yielding Boro varieties were Brridhan 28 and Brridhan 29.
In Aman season BR11 is equally popular at the farm level. To meet the need of the hour BRRI is developing new varieties with similar qualities, the paper said.
To face the challenge of climate change in recent times BRRI has developed a series of cold, submergence, drought and saline tolerant varieties that includes Brridhan 36, 40, 41, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56 and 57.
Among the most recent BRRI varieties, Brridhan 62 was released as the world's first zinc enriched rice which is one of the most short durative Aman varieties having average life time of 100 days, the keynote said.