सिंहदरबार संवाददाता
Sindhuli. Some are chatting with their families. Some are enjoying food and drinks with their friends. Most of the employees are on public holiday on Saturday. But the employees working in the agriculture branch of Hariharpurgadhi Rural Municipality do not have any public holiday.
They are seen working in the fields to produce ‘Rampur Hybrid-10’ maize seeds. Hybrid maize seeds are being produced on 22 katta land in the rural municipality office premises. For this, male breeding lines (RML 18) and female breeding lines (RML 150) have been sown. The seeds sown in the first week of Mangsir have now turned into young plants.
In addition, the ‘dhanchamara’ of Umrika needs to be removed from the female breeding lines. When producing hybrid corn seeds, only the male line needs to be pollinated, so the spikelets that have sprouted on the female reproductive line must be removed. The male flowers of corn are called spikelets. Since the spikelets that have sprouted on the female line must be removed within a certain time, the agricultural workers have been busy with this task without even taking public holidays. The swaying of the corn plants has encouraged them to do this task. According to the workers, special care must be taken when removing spikelets. The spikelets should be firmly held at the base with the left hand and plucked off with the right hand in one blow. The plucked spikelets should be immediately placed in a sack or bag and managed.
Since the ‘Rampur Hybrid-10’ corn seeds have good yield potential, there is a plan to produce its seeds and distribute them to local farmers. This will help Sindhuli district become self-reliant in maize production, said Pravesh Devkota, the agriculture officer of the rural municipality. “Since there is a high demand for maize seeds, it is not possible to meet this demand through traditional farming methods alone. To solve this problem, hybrid maize has been adopted as an alternative, which gives almost double the production,” he said.
The production of hybrid maize seeds has been started with the joint efforts of the Provincial Seed Quality Control Center, Bagmati Province, National Maize Research Program, Rampur, Chitwan, Agricultural Development Office, Sindhuli and Hariharpurgadhi Rural Municipality. If hybrid maize seeds can be produced domestically, a large amount of money spent on purchasing seeds can be saved, said Rajan Dhakal, the head of the Seed Quality Control Center, Hetauda, which has a large plot for hybrid maize seed production in Hariharpurgadhi. According to him, a huge amount of money is spent every year on importing hybrid maize seeds in Nepal.
Vajradhwaj Waiba, the head of the rural municipality, expressed happiness that the hybrid maize seed production work in Hariharpurgadhi Rural Municipality is starting to achieve success. He said, “Hariharpurgadhi is to be developed as a major center for hybrid maize seed production. Earlier, it was said that nothing except rice was available in Hariharpurgadhi. Now we will make people come to purchase maize seeds as well.” He said that there is a plan to provide maize seeds free of cost to the farmers of his municipality. The rural municipality aims to increase the income of local farmers by expanding the area under maize cultivation and increasing its production. Local farmers are hopeful that this will help them avoid the hassle of purchasing seeds from outside and reduce the cost of maize farming.
Maize farming in Nepal is done from the Terai to the high hills. Maize is mainly grown in the spring (Phalgun-Chait), rainy season (Jesh-Asar) and winter (Asoj-Kartik). It is estimated that hybrid maize occupies about 20 percent of the total maize-growing area in Nepal, and the area under hybrid maize is expanding day by day, not only in the Terai and inner Madhes but also in the mid-hills.
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