Capacity Assessment of Agriculture Department and Punjab Food Department on Zinc Wheat Adoption, Segregation and Scaling up

GAIN Pakistan is interested to introduce Biofortified Zinc wheat as part of the diet of the population of Pakistan to improve the nutrition status of population. For this purpose, an assessment of Food Department, and Agriculture Department of Government of Punjab was undertaken. This was done through a capacity assessment of two major public departments in Punjab, the Punjab food department mainly responsible for the procurement of Wheat grain from farmers and also regulating the flour mills, and the Agriculture extension department for extension services and awareness raining among farmers community. IAC assessed the current procurement system of the Punjab food department, and how the segregation of BZW could be incorporated into the wheat grain procurement system. Secondly, the role of the agriculture department had been assessed for scaling up the BZW on a larger scale.