BSS, Rajshahi :
Agricultural scientists and researchers have urged the farmers to use modern varieties and technologies of lentil for boosting yield to meet up the gradually rising demands.
They viewed additional around one lakh tonne of lentil could be harvested in the region including the vast barind tract through the best uses of modern varieties and technologies.
To maintain sound soil health, it could be advisable to grow pulses, particularly BARI Mashur-7 using a different system in order to improve compatibility between monsoon rice and upland summer crops. They were addressing a field day-2017 of BARI Mashur-7 held at Maroil area under Godagari upazila of the district on Thursday.
Barind Station of On-Farm Research Division (OFRD) under Bangladesh Agriculture Research Institute (BARI) organised the programme in a bid to sensitize the farmers towards adopting the modern cropping pattern for boosting lentil production.
Innovation of Sustainable Crop Management for Drought-prone area to Face Climate Change Project supported the programme.
The initiative has been taken to increase agricultural production and income of marginalised farm families of the Barind tract by adapting climate adaptive sustainable agricultural technologies, diversifying income generating activities and skill development.
Deputy Director of Department of Agriculture Extension Dev Dulal Dhali and Principal Scientific Officer of Fruit Research Station Dr Alim Uddin addressed the meeting as chief and special guests respectively with Dr Shakhawat Hossain, Senior Scientific Officer of OFRD-Barind, in the chair.
Upazila Agriculture Officer Towfiqur Rahman and OFRD Scientific Officer Mahbubul Alam also spoke.
They also visited some projection plots of BARI Mashur-7, a high yielding lentil variety innovated by BARI, that has an enormous prospect of elevating the living and livelihood condition of the farmers.
Dev Dulal Dhali said many more additional pulses could be produced every year in the high Barind tract by giving optimum motivation to the farmers and providing them with need based supports to cultivate more land with lentil, chickpea and grasspea.
