By Our Correspondent, Damak, May 23: Farmers in the Jhapa district are increasingly being attracted towards maize farming as the yields have significantly increased after the launch of the 'Maize Zone Programme' there.

According to Rabindra Subedi, Senior Agriculture Officer at the Prime Minister Agriculture Modernization Project, Implementation Unit, Jhapa, the programme has been implemented in 500 hectares of land in Jhapa Rural Municipality-6 and Kankai Municipality-5 for two years now.

According to the data provided by the Agriculture Knowledge Center, about 280,000 tonnes of maize are being produced in Jhapa every year.

"Jhapa is a fertile land for maize and in my opinion, it is the district that produces the biggest chunk of maize in the country," said Subedi.

According to Subedi, both indigenous and hybrid (Rampur Hybrid-10) maize demonstration programme has been completed in 10 hectares under the programme.

He said that at least 60 tonnes of maize have been produced from 10 hectares of land and that a total of 393.3 tonnes of maize is estimated to be produced this year.

He added that the winter maize area expansion programme had been completed in 69 hectares of land, expanding the area to 21 hectares. The project implementation unit informed that about 119.7 tonnes of maize had been produced in the expanded area.

The maize seed growth programme has been conducted in one group and one agricultural farm in 20 hectares of land, he said.

According to the recommendations of the Maize Zone and Agricultural Technician, the use of improved varieties of maize seeds has yielded better results, but in some cases, farmers have heard of problems when planting Indian hybrid seeds, Subedi said. He also said that there was a problem of nonbearing in some of the crops