Introduction

In Pakistan, agriculture plays a prominent role in employing 42.3% labor force and sharing 18.9%
in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of the country (GOP, 2018). This sector provides the food
basket to population nutrition needs, raw material to local industry and earns foreign exchange
from agricultural exports through various sub-sectors crops, livestock, forestry and fishing
Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS, 2018)

Cotton is a major cash crop of Pakistan contributing 1% in GDP of the country and sharing 5.5%
in value addition of the agriculture (PBS, 2018). Pakistan is 4th major cotton producing with the
share of 3rd cotton consuming country of the world and sharing 7.1% of cotton production and
9.2% of cotton consumption of the world Pakistan Central Cotton Committee (PCCC, 2018).

Punjab the foremost cotton producing province with the production of 3349.44 (000, Tonnes) and
sharing 65.39% of total country cotton production (Agriculture Statistics of Pakistan, 2017).

Southern Punjab has formally known the cotton zone of Punjab, a major cotton producing area,
sharing almost 94% of total provincial cotton production (Government of Punjab, 2017). Millions
of farmer’s employment and livelihood are interlinked with cotton cultivation, (PARC, 2013).

Adaptive research is considered to regulate technology to the specific needs of an actual set of
environmental conditions by taking into account the different bio-physical and socio-economic
surroundings of the farmers. The concept of “On Farm Adaptive Research” (OFAR) needs full
farmers’ participation, by direct contact between researchers and farmers and determined multi-
disciplinary investigation of farmers’ situations (Adeola et al., 2014).

On-farm Adaptive Research (OFAR) is one of the Agricultural Development Programme (ADP)
activities uses to develop recommendations for representative groups of farmers. The concept of
OFAR entails full farmers’ participation, direct contact between researchers and farmers and
concerted multi- disciplinary investigation of farmers’ situations.

According to Mahapatra & Behera (2011) the strategy for OFAR has to be a “bottom-up”
approach. On-farm Adaptive Research (OFAR) is one of the Agricultural Development
Programme (ADP) activities uses to develop recommendations for representative groups of
farmers. The concept of OFAR entails full farmers’ participation, direct contact between
researchers and farmers and concerted multi- disciplinary investigation of farmers’ situations.
Farmers’ participation in the OFAR also affords them the opportunities of identifying farming
system constraints, problems and its priorities, managing experiment and evaluating results.
Participation in this context means the active involvement of all the stakeholders in OFAR process
of diagnostic survey, research, and field test and demonstration phases. Strong farmer participation
is essential in order to identify farmers’ goals and problems (Farrington and Martin, 1988).

Climate change is one of the biggest problems the whole world is collectively facing. Significances
of changing climate such as abridged availability of water resources, declining soil quality and
increased incidence of pest and diseases have caused in main changes in conditions negatively
disturbing agricultural production. (Enete and Amusa, 2016).

In the South Asian Regions climate change is a serious challenge for human societies and
economies due to their ecological and geographical variations. Countries with large population are
living along river deltas and coastal lines are more prone to the adverse impact of the climate
change. There are certain clear evidences of climate changes in these countries like, recession of
Himalayan glaciers, changes in marine ecosystems and rainfall variability Mustafa, and 2011).

Environment and climate change are indivisibly linked to sustainable development. Pakistan
requires greater progress in environmental protection. Water scarcity is increasing, land
productivity is decreasing and climate change is deteriorating these threats. The risk of natural
disasters, increased by climate change as well as economic shocks, is adding to existing
weaknesses. Low income countries particularly having higher dependence on agriculture, likely to
be affected more in future because of low adaptive capacity (Holst et al., 2010 and Schlenker, et
al., 2006).

Consequences of changing climate such as reduced availability of water resources, declining soil
quality and increased frequency of pest and diseases have resulted in significant changes in
conditions negatively affecting agricultural production (Enete and Amusa, 2016). Climate
adaptation in agriculture is recognized as an essential intervention to reduce vulnerability and
negative impacts from changing climate (Tambo and Abdoulaye, 2013)

In the past few decades, the need for urgent actions to adapt to this changing climate and its impacts
has become a subject of many climate related discussions globally, with emphasis on strengthening
resilience and adaptive capacity to climate risks and natural disasters (Holzkämper, 2017).
Even though climate adaptation is a global problem, the need for adaptation is considered higher
among developing countries where vulnerability is presumably higher (Adger,2003) and also in
the interest of individual farmers who rely on their venue generated from agricultural production
(Holzkämper, 2017).