The government has a plan to give subsidy to the farmers for jute seed production as an integrated project is underway for achieving self sufficiency in jute seed production.
Agriculture minister Dr M Abdur Razzaque said this while addressing a virtual meeting on Thursday.
“To curb dependency on foreign countries for jute seed, we have to achieve self-sufficiency in jute seed, but the farmers are reluctant to produce jute seed as jute seed production is less profitable compared to other crops,” said the minister.
So, the government will give incentive or subsidy to encourage the farmers in jute seed production, he added.
Claiming that the yield of local jute variety is comparatively more than the Indian variety, the agriculture minister said the scientists already have discovered high yielding jute variety by using genome sequence which was recently developed by the Jute Research Institute.
“So, we will achieve self-sufficiency in jute seed production, if we can make the high yielding jute variety popular among the farmers,” he added.
He urged the scientists and extension workers to take a short and long term initiatives for quick implementation of a road map of achieving self-sufficiency in jute seed production.
