DUSHANBE, May 26, 2009, Asia-Plus — Recent heavy rainfalls and resulting floods and mudslides have caused a serious damage to the country’s cotton sector.
According to Muhammadi Ormonov, the head of the crops sector directorate within the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA), torrential rain has demolished 22,401 hectares of cotton fields. “However, these findings are not the latest ones and the ministry specialists are still working in the provinces to assess an actual damage caused by disasters to the cotton sector. We hope to receive new data by the end of this week,” Ormonov said, noting that new data may be much higher. “Farmers have replanted cotton on 21,552 hectares to this date” he added.
The worst hit area was the Khatlon province, where heavy rainfalls have demolished more than 12,000 hectares of cotton fields.
In the northern Sughd province, disasters have demolished 8,864 hectares of cotton fields.
The MoA official recent heavy rainfalls had also damaged more than 1,360 hectares of lands sown with Turkish elite cotton varieties Flora and Carmen in the Hissor Valley, central Tajikistan. In all, more than 3,800 hectares of farmland there have been sow with the Turkish cotton varieties. “This year, we have delivered enough seeds of high-yielding varieties of cotton from Turkey – 300 tons,” said Ormonov, “These seeds are used for replanting; farmers have replanted these varieties on an area of 1,000 hectares to this date.”
