Chandigarh, June 20 -- Despite an ambitious target of bringing five lakh acres under direct seeded rice (DSR) cultivation during the current kharif season, Punjab has so far recorded only about 2.7 lakh acres under the water-saving paddy sowing method,highlighting the continuing challenge of expanding its adoption among farmers.On average, paddy is cultivated over nearly 30 lakh hectares, or 73.5 lakh acres, across the state each year.

Officials in the Punjab agriculture department, however, remain hopeful that the area under DSR may increase further as verification of farmers' claims is still underway. Although the department had fixed May 31 as the deadline for sowing paddy through the DSR method, paddy cultivation activities generally...