Wheat production is continually declining in Bangladesh due to climate change, says Agriculture Minister Muhammad Abdur Razzaque.

His remarks to the media came following a meeting with a delegation of International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in his Secretariat office in the capital on Wednesday (Feb 17).

“The climate and weather of the country is favourable for wheat production. The wheat producing areas and production have increased compared to the past. However, we still need to import 3 million metric tonnes of wheat each year.”

The minister also said that there is great demand of wheat in the country’s poultry and fisheries.

“However, the overall wheat production in on the decline due to climate changes,” he said.

Stressing the need to invent high yielding wheat breeds Razzaque expressed Bangladesh’s interest to work with CIMMYT.

Director General of the non profit research institute, Martin Kropff, led the CIMMYT delegation.

CIMMYT grew out of a pilot program sponsored by the Mexican government and the Rockefeller Foundation in the 1940s and 1950s aimed at raising farm productivity in Mexico. The higher yielding varieties, invented by CIMMYT helped Mexico attain self-sufficiency in wheat production in the 1950s. Additionally, the varieties were imported by India and Pakistan in the 1960s to stave off famine, soon bringing those countries record harvests, reads the about us section of CIMMYT’s website.

CIMMYT was formally launched as an international organization in 1966.