Speaking at a workshop as chief guest he said the minor crops can play an important role to meet nutrition requirement of people.

The workshop titled 'Bangladesh Country Almanac' was organised jointly by Bangladesh Agricultural Research Council (BARC) Bangladesh Rice Research Institute (BRRI), Soil Resource Development Institute (SRDI) and International Maize and Wheat Improvement Centre (CIMMYT) in collaboration with USAID.

The minister said though the production of food grains has increased three times over the last couple of decades, a significant part of the people still suffers from malnutrition.

"We have evolved 350 varieties of major crops, but a significant number of minor crops, which have an immense potentiality in the country, are yet to be developed," he added.

It is not yield, rather the knowledge gap for which the farmers cannot grow adequate crops on their farmland, Anwar said, adding that education and proper training for both can reduce the gap.

"We need to transmit agricultural information and supply adequate seeds to farmers at a reasonable price," he added.

The minister said data is the basic raw material for any kind of scientific research and output.

Bangladesh Country Almanac (BAC), a database of agricultural information, would help farmers as well researchers to get adequate data for further development of agriculture, he said.

Kazi Abul Kashem, secretary to agriculture ministry, said BAC is an integrated package of GIS-based database, which will be helpful for getting information about agricultural research and natural resource management.

M Anwar Iqbal, member director, planning and evolution of BARC, gave an overview of BAC.

The speakers also called upon researchers and agricultural officials to educate farmers for the development of agriculture.

They underscored the need for proper training from highest officials to farmers to ensure more production in this sector.

They said authentic data and information on agriculture can play an important role in this regard.

Walter E Shepherd, acting deputy director of USAID and DR M Nurul Alam, executive chairman of BARC also spoke at the workshop.