How to produce sunflower hybeid seed

摘要

Hybrid seed is very critical and costly initial input which determines productivity and net profits from this crop. Farmers are therefore, advised to produce sunflower hybrid seeds at their own farms to meet their seed requirement. Sunflower is an important spring oilseed crop in Punjab. Sunflower seeds contain 40-43 percent high quality oil which is used for manufacturing edible refind oil and vanaspati. Hybrid cultivars of sunflower have become very popular among the farmers because of their high productivity and uniform maturity which allows mechanical harvesting of the crop. In Punjab, it occupied 21.6 thousand hectares with a total production of 3.78 thousand tones thus giving an average of 17.5 q/ha. during the year 2008-09. Though farmers arebeing continuously advised to grow only recommended hybrids such as PSH 569, PSFH118, SH3322 and GKSFH 2002 to ensure higher net profits but many times it has been observed that they have to buy unscrupulous seed from market simply because seed of recommended hybrids is not available.