13.06.2013 | permalink
Amid hue and cry over crop diversification, area under the Bt cotton crop has witnessed a stagnation. With the Punjab Agricultural University not being able to do much to increase the area under crop, it has started researching on better variety of guar crop with little hope to give an alternative to the wheat-paddy cycle. Since Bt cotton was introduced in 2005 in Punjab, area under cotton has not witnessed any dramatic increase even as some affects were seen during recent years in cotton market. [...] Best performance of Bt cotton crop was witnessed in 2006-07 when 5.73 lakh hectare area was under the crop and the worst performance was in 2010-11 when only 4.7 lakh hectare was under it.