Pakistan producing only 34 percent of edible oil

Increase in sunflower sowing, whose seed contains 40 per cent high quality edible oil, can make the country self reliant in edible oil. Pakistan is only producing 34 per cent of its total requirement of edible oil and spending huge amount of precious foreign exchange on import of rest of the 66 per cent.

Continuous increase in population is also pushing the edible oil requirement up and it called for need to promote sowing of oilseed crops in the country to decrease reliance on imports, said a spokesman of the Punjab Agriculture Department here on Monday. He said sunflower crop's duration is from 100-110 days and it can easily be sown and harvested between two crops because of its short period. He further said that its spring crop can be sown from January 01 in Southern Punjab, from January 15 in Central Punjab and Northern Punjab from February 01. Meanwhile, the spokesman has also advised the mango growers to save their crop from extreme winter conditions and fog.