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The ready to harvest major and minor crops, including cotton, paddy, chilly and vegetables worth almost Rs85bn ($0.85bn) have been completely washed out by the rain and floods in Sindh, an official of Sindh Abadgar Board said yesterday.

"Almost all the summer crops planted on 2.1 million acres of riverine land on two sides of the Indus River were ready for the harvest," the president of Sindh Abadgar Board Abdul Majeed Nizamani told, adding that rains and floods wiped out the standing crops completely.

The average value of the washed out crops comes to around Rs40,000 acre, which brings the total cost to around Rs85bn.

A part of the crops planted on mainstream agriculture lands in the province have also been impacted, the farmers added.

The farmers in the province grow cotton at an estimated area of 1.8 million acre, paddy at 1.8 to two million acres and sugarcane at an area of 400,000 to 450,000 acre.

Fodder is another notable summer crop, which farmers have cultivated on large area this season, Nizamani added.

According to a World Bank's study, 92 per cent chilly of the country is produced by Sindh.

Nizamani further said a part of paddy crop on mainstream agriculture land has been impacted in lower parts of the province. On the contrary, "the same crop is plentiful in upper Sindh, as this part of the province has not received rains in that quantity," he added.

Only in Ghotki district, farmers have planted cotton, chilly, cane, vegetables and other crops at an area of 30,000 acre riverine land. "Except cane, which was grown at an area of 4,000 acre, all the crops on the district's reverine land have been destroyed completely," he said.