RAJSHAHI, March 21, 2018 (BSS)-Agricultural scientists and researchers have urged the farmers to cultivate wheat through using seeder machine to boost yield to meet its gradually mounting demand.
They said the machine developed by Bangladesh Agriculture Research Institute (BARI) will also help lessening pressure on irrigation water for the wheat farming side by side with minimizing the production cost.
They revealed this while addressing two separate farmers’ field day meetings on projection of the seeder machine at Damdama and Belpukur villages under Tanore and Godagari upazilas respectively in the district on Tuesday.
Farm Machinery and Post-harvest Process Engineering (FMPE) Division and On- Farm Research Division (OFRD), Barind centre under BARI jointly organized the meetings in association with Krishi Gobeshona Foundation (KGF). More than 160 farmers joined the programmes.
Principal Investigator and Principal Scientific Officer of FMPE Dr Ayub Hossain and its Senior Scientific Officer Dr Arshadul Hoque addressed the meetings as focal persons with Senior Scientific Officer of OFRD (Barind Centre) Dr Shakhawat Hossain in the chair.
Upazila Agriculture Officer Shafiqul Islam and Assistant Engineer of Barind Multipurpose Development Authority Shariful Islam also spoke.
Dr Ayub Hossain opined that there is an enormous scope of increasing Rabi crop in the region with minimum tillage and seeding method using residual soil moisture. Thereby, pressure on groundwater can be reduced considerably if wheat is cultivated instead of only Boro rice.
Giving a salient feature of the tool, he said the seeder can be promoted in the Barind area for timely sowing of wheat, chickpea and lentil just after Aman rice using residual moisture in the soil.
It can also prepare seedbed in one pass and sow seeds in line and cover seeds at the same time. Planting cost of wheat, maize and rice is supposed to be reduced by 57 to 78 percent compare to the conventional method.
Dr Ayub says minimum tillage of soil emits 44 percent less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere which is also an environment friendly technology.