The Telangana agriculture department has asked the collectors and district agriculture officers in Adilabad and Warangal districts to convince farmers to destroy cotton crop after the third picking as pink bollworm attack has reached the economic threshold level (ETL) this year in these districts. Its incidence has been ‘sporadic’ in other districts too.
The Telangana government took the call after taking note of the large-scale damage caused by pink bollworm pest to cotton crop in Gujarat, Karnataka, Maharashtra and a few other states. Around 19.09 lakh hectares in the state have witnessed cotton cultivation.The Telangana agriculture department has asked the collectors and district agriculture officers in Adilabad and Warangal districts to convince farmers to destroy cotton crop after the third picking as pink boll-worm attack has reached the economic threshold level (ETL) this year in these districts. Its incidence has been 'sporadic' in other districts too.#
State agriculture production commissioner C Parthasarathi has written to the collectors and district agriculture officers to initiate a large-scale campaign to sensitise farmers about the problem to control its spread this season as well as in the next kharif season, according to a report in top south Indian daily.
The farmers are to be told that the maximum yields of cotton are realised in the first three pickings and that they won't get any considerable yield from the fourth picking onwards, said agriculture department officials.
According to according to the Mumbai office of the Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) of the US department of agriculture, the higher incidences of pink bollworm infestations are due to a number of reasons ranging from resistance of bollworm to Bt toxins, use of spurious and unapproved seeds, limited or poor planting of refugia non-Bt cotton, cultivation of long duration hybrids which provides continuous food for the pest, poor integrated pest management practices and storage of damaged cotton at gins and market yards.
(DS)
Fibre2Fashion News Desk – India