GAIBANDHA, OCT 28, 2020 (BSS) – Agriculture experts here yesterday urged the farmers to farm short term duration and climate resilient BRRI Dhan 71 in larger scale to ensure food security to keep pace with changed climatic condition.
“As the change in seasons is being felt and noticed and drought like situation prevails during the rainy season for want of required rainfall, there is no alternative to farm drought tolerant paddies to meet the food demand ”, they said.
They made the comments while addressing a function on sample crop cutting of high yield variety BRRI Dhan 71 at South Kazibari village under Bongram union of Sadullapur upazila in the district on Tuesday noon.
Sadullapur Upazila Agriculture Office under the auspices of Department Of Agricultural Extension (DAE) arranged the function to motivate the farmers to farm the HYV in larger scale to ensure sustainable food security of the country.
Additional Deputy Director (Crop) of the DAE agriculturist Quamruzzaman, addressed the function as chief guest and Upazila Agriculture Officer Md. Khajanur Rahman was present at the event as the special guest.
Sub Assistant Plant Protection Officer Abdur Rob, sub Assistant Agriculture Officer Abu Bakar Siddique and farmer Saiful bHasan also spoke at the function.
Additional Deputy Director the of DAE agriculturist Quamruzzaman described the necessity of BRRI Dhan farming in Aman season in different grounds and said around 4000 liters of water is needed to produce one kilogram of paddy as irrigation whereas, less than 1000 liters of water is required for the drought- tolerant varieties.
The variety could be farmed successfully without irrigation in the drought prone areas of the district and it might be harvested in 92 days just after transplanting the 20 days old seedlings on the high land and medium high land, he also said.
After harvesting the variety the farmers could cultivate cash crop mustard or potato- muk dal-indigenous variety parija paddy on the same land systematically and in this way, a farmer could get four crops in a year to earn economic benefit against the crops, he added.
Later, a team of agri officials and the farmers formally inaugurated the cutting of BRRI dhan 71 at the land of one farmer Saiful Hasan in the block amid much enthusiasm.
After cutting the paddy, the farmers expressed their satisfaction over the output of the variety as about 14 maunds of paddy were produced from a bigha of land under normal management with nominal cost.
A large number of people including public representatives, local elite, invited guests, farmers and journalists of print and electronic media participated in the function