Research at UAF - Model Farming for Sustainable Agriculture: A collaborative effort of university expert and private sector under university- industry linkage program-Phase I

Sponsoring Agency: HR Chemical Group (Pakistan), 5-D, Industrial  Estate, Multan

Executing Agency: Institute of Soil and Environmental Sciences,   University of agriculture, 38040 Faisalabad

Principal Investigator: Dr. Muhammad Yaseen, Associate professor,  Institute of Soil and Environmental Sciences

Co-Principal Investigator: Dr. Saif Ur Rehman Kashif, Assistant professor, Institute of Soil and Environmental Sciences

Project Cost:                        19,64,100

Duration of Project:             Three year

Progress Reports


Purpose:
Land, water, scientific knowledge and climate are conducive for high agricultural productivity in Pakistan. Moreover, global scenario highlights food security on top priority but our agriculture has failed to meet the local requirements due to one or the other reasons. This indicates that our agriculture needs to focus on farmers’ education, technology generation and its mode of transfer to the farmers according to the climate change and WTO standards. The theme of the present study is based on rendering the services to the farmers for increasing the input use efficiency without increase in cost of production.
Design/methodology/approach:
Forty nine trials on wheat and twenty on maize crop were conducted on farmer’s fields at various districts of the Punjab during 2008-09. The minimum area for a trial was 5 acres with additional one acre as a control having conventional farmer’s practices. By taking an example of wheat crop, the recommended fertilizer rate for wheat is 3 bags of urea, 2 bags of DAP and 1 bag of SOP per acre. While in this project, use of half of all the above fertilizers rates was recommended with the addition of two bags (25 kg/bag) of poultry waste based compost, one liter of humic acid having pH < 7 and two foliar sprays of multi-nutrients.
Findings:
The uniform crop stand showed broader leaves with dark green color in wheat and maize and 15-32% more number of tillers m-2 in wheat crop in model farming plots compared to traditional plots (control).  Results revealed significant improvement in seed germination, crop growth and development even under adverse soil and climatic conditions compared to traditional method of cultivation. The estimated increase in yield was about 7 to 34% and 5 to 19% for wheat and maize, respectively.
Originality/value:
This paper provides useful results that application of package of technology resulted in saving in cost of production with an additional saving in water and increase in yield. Since the technology was demonstrated to the farmers so they applied all steps themselves under the guidance of trained field staff and visualized the results.