Harare — THE country should invest in research to come up with better yielding cotton varieties to improve the current ginning capacity from the 220 000 tonnes to 700 000 tonnes by 2010.

In an interview last Friday, Mr Godfrey Buka, the director-general of the Cotton Ginners' Association, said they were looking at ways to come up with varieties that save money and quality crop. "Quality has gone down due to indiscriminate buying and we should have hit one million tonnes of seed cotton currently at 220 000 tonnes while the ginning capacity is 700 000 tonnes," he said.

Some observers have said the country could achieve the one million tonnes target for cottonseed if it adopts the use of latest scientific processes including genetically modified varieties. The use of GMOs is, however, not yet legalised in Zimbabwe although non-commercial trials of the biotechnology are allowed under the supervision of the Biotechnology Authority of Zimbabwe.

Mr Buka commended Government for coming up with regulations to normalise business between contractors and growers.

"The legislation requires that every contractor be registered so that there is transparency and fair play in that every contractor has to support production," he said.

The unregistered cotton buyers offered farmers higher prices for their produce mainly because they did not provide inputs to the growers.

This resulted in a rapid decline of contractors from 25 to 12 in 2007 that are currently registered. The situation, however, posed a threat to the survival of the industry since contractors provide up to 90 percent of support to cotton farmers. "We need to pull together with farmers and if we had not had the regulations most players would not have come back," said Mr Buka.