"The use of Bt cotton seeds helped the province to produce higher quantity of cotton this year,” said Ramzan Chandio, a cotton grower in Mirpur Khas.

An official at the Sindh agriculture department confirmed that now almost every grower was harnessing Bt seeds in the province to increase per acre yield.

"The yield has shot up to 100 maund per acre on the back of the genetically advanced seeds from 30 maund per acre earlier,” he said, adding that the availability of water and timely rainfalls also helped growers to produce the desirable quantity of cotton this year.

According to the Pakistan Cotton Ginners Association, Hyderabad, Mirpur Khas, Sanghar, Nawabshah, and Jamshoro registered bumper cotton production during the current fiscal year.

The grower said that the use of Bt cotton seeds protects the crop from pest attacks, while it also manages to give good production even with scarce water.

"However, the constant modification of the seeds is a must to improve its resistibility to pest attacks,” he said, adding that the government should allocate some funds for seed modification in the forthcoming budget.

He said that if a proper research and development work was done, then the province might surpass the record output of 4.2 million bales achieved in the fiscal 2009.

The government officials, however, admitted that the Sindh cotton production was still lower than the target of four million bales set for the current fiscal year. “The government has, however, again set a target of four million bales for the upcoming fiscal year.”

The official said that the growers had completed sowing of seeds for the next crop of cotton in lower parts of Sindh, which was expected to give production in the last week of June or first week of July.