Olive cultivation in Pakistan 

The history of olive cultivation in Pakistan is quite old, but significant progress began in 1999 when agricultural experts in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa started experimenting with hybrid soybean, sunflower, and olive cultivation to increase edible oil production.

Hundreds of thousands of olive cuttings and plants were brought from Jalalabad, Afghanistan, and planted at Tarnab Farm, Peshawar and Sang Bhatti Farm, Mardan. Subsequently, in 2001, a mega project under the Pakistan Oil Seed Development Bord (PODB) was launched for grafting wild olive trees and planting new ones. This project successfully extended olive cultivation experiments to Punjab and Balochistan, alongside Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

Unfortunately, in 2010, following the approval of the 18th Constitutional Amendment, the federal institution responsible for edible oil production, the Pakistan Oilseed Development Board, was dissolved. As a result, the olive cultivation project was also affected. Read more…