Duduwa rural municipality starts producing rice seeds

Khajura, Aug 23: Duduwa rural municipality in Banke has started producing rice seeds on its own. The local government aims to supply locally produced rice seeds to farmers starting from the upcoming year. Rural municipality’s agriculture section chief Sushil Kumar Sharma has said that around 30 hectares of land has been dedicated to growing the rice seeds, with an estimated yield of 90 tons.

The produce will be distributed to farmers through a cooperative. This quantity will be sufficient for the cultivation across 1,500 hectares of land. As the local government said, two varieties of rice seeds named ‘Radha-4’ and ‘Ramdhan’ are to be produced this year. The seed testing laboratory will first measure the quality of produce before storing the products in the agricultural processing center.

The local government this year has invested Rs two million for the local production of rice seeds. In addition to this, it plans to start productions of wheat, maize and lentil locally within the current fiscal year. Rural municipality chair Narendra Kumar Chaudhary said the efforts aim to address the issue of seeds scarcity during the planting season and provide relief to farmers. “It is driven by a commitment to sustain the local agricultural sector and empower the farming community.”

The local government has ensured a 50 percent grant for the purchase of agricultural tools and for the production of rice seeds to farmers. The geographical area of Duduwae encompasses a total of 9,128 hectares, and out of which 4218.09 hectares are arable land. The ward-wise scenario is that each ward has some 50 percent of arable land and the average rice production is 4.3 metric tons per hectare.