DUSHANBE, October 20, 2008, Asia-Plus  -- This year, irrigated areas under winter wheat have been extended to 170,000 hectares in Tajikistan this year, Agriculture Minister Qosim Qosimov remarked at a press conference in Dushanbe on October 20.  

According to him, they have decided to extend irrigated areas under winter wheat in order to increase wheat productions.

Last year, farmers planted wheat on more than 220,000 hectares of lands, including 117,000 hectares of the irrigated lands. 

“To increase wheat yields specialists from the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) and the Academy of Agricultural Sciences have decided to stake on the irrigated lands and extend the irrigated areas under wheat,” the minister said, noting that that would allow increasing wheat yields from 1.76 tons/ha to 3.0 tons/ha.

He further added that experiences conducted by experts had shown that intensive work would increase wheat wields even to 8.0 tons per one hectare.  

            We will recall that Tajik farmers have yielded 774,941 tons of grains from an area of 436,739 hectares this year, which is 82.1 percent of this year’s target.