Dr. Walid Yehia, Undersecretary of the Cotton Research Institute at the Agricultural Research Center of the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation, said that the cotton marketing season will start on the first of next September, after the harvest season has already begun in the governorates of Fayoum and Beni Suef in Upper Egypt.
Yahya added to Al-Dustour: “The ministerial decision regarding the system for marketing the new cotton crop for the 2023/2024 season will be issued within hours, bearing in mind that preliminary indicators indicate an increase in the average productivity of an acre from 9 to 10 quintals.”
The Undersecretary of the Cotton Research Institute expected that the price of cotton this year would not be less than the price of the guarantee set by the government, but rather that it would rise from this price, which amounts to 4,500 pounds per quintal for the governorates of Upper Egypt, and 5,500 pounds for the governorates of Lower Egypt. And he continued: “Control operations are being completed in the governorates of Lower Egypt, in conjunction with conducting preventive spraying and cotton banding operations, to facilitate the penetration of sunlight in a way that contributes to the ripening of the crop.”
And he continued, “Field visits to farmers’ fields in Lower Egypt indicate that the plant is in good health and has low rates of infection with bollworms.”
It was also noted that the farmers were interested in applying the technical recommendations for each variety of cotton separately, according to the technical distributions by the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation represented by the Cotton Research Institute, according to Yahya.
He explained that one of the most important recommendations this season is those related to high temperatures and climatic changes, and countering that by spraying silicates, phosphorus and potassium, to increase plant tolerance to high temperatures, without any negative impact on the crop.