Sow maize with pneumatic planters: Agri Dept to growers

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Tribune News Service

Moga, February 28

Days after the Finance Commission announced a grant of Rs 350 crore to Punjab for crop diversification, the Department of Agriculture has begun wooing farmers to go in for maize cultivation by adopting modern technology. The maize in spring season is commonly sown in Moga, Barnala, Sangrur, Mansa, Ludhiana and many other districts of the Malwa belt.

Saves water, reduces input cost

Maize sown with pneumatic planters saves water, reduces input cost and increases yield by about 30 quintals per acre. — Dr Jaswinder Singh Brar, Senior Agro-Scientist

The department’s experiment of sowing maize with pneumatic planters on raised-beds in the past couple of years has shown good results. Its scientists are conducting demonstrations of maize-sowing with an aim to encourage farmers to adopt crop diversification.

One such demonstration was carried out at Rajoana village in Sudhaar block of Ludhiana district, last week. Dr Jaswinder Singh Brar, a senior agro-scientist who conducted the demonstration, said it’s an opportune time for sowing of maize after harvest of the potato crop in the spring season.

Pitching for the adoption of modern technology in farming practices, Dr Brar said: “The planting of uniform seeds in equal spaces and depths is easier with pneumatic planter, and requires just three to five irrigations in a 100-day span as compared with 10 to 12 irrigations in normally sown crop. Ludhiana’s Chief Agriculture Officer Dr Narinder Singh Benipal said: “There are hardly any weeds seen in the pneumatic planter sown fields, which lowers input cost with no use of weedicides.”