Sri Ganganagar : The outbreak of pink caterpillar is being seen everywhere in the cotton crop. From the agricultural supervisor to the senior officer of the Agriculture Department, everyone has been putting their full strength on the control and management of the pink caterpillar outbreak since the beginning of the Kharif season. Also, the Agriculture Department has issued an advisory for pink caterpillar control. Farmer seminars are being held at the Gram Panchayat, Block and District level. The team of Dr. Satish Kumar Sharma, Additional Director (Agriculture) Extension of the Agriculture Department Sri Ganganagar block, inspected the fields of BT cotton in Sahibsinghwala, 20 Z, 17 Z, 20 O, 13 and 14 FF, 47 FF and 49 FF etc. villages of Sri Ganganagar and Srikaranpur tehsil area on Tuesday. Due to rain, the cotton crop is good but the outbreak of pink caterpillar was seen everywhere in the BT cotton crop. When the team looked at the bolls of each BT cotton plant, breeding of pink caterpillar was found in them. Farmers Baldev Singh and Manjit Singh also saw pink caterpillars in the cotton crop. Departmental officials say that there is an infestation of pink caterpillars. Apart from Additional Director of Agriculture Department Dr. Sharma, the inspection team included Assistant Director Sri Ganganagar Sushil Kumar Sharma, Assistant Director Surjeet Kumar, Assistant Agriculture Officers Naresh Kumar and Rajendra Kumar as well as agricultural supervisors and farmers.
Awareness being created about pink caterpillar
Assistant Director of Agriculture Department, Surjeet Singh said that farmers are being informed about the identification of pink caterpillar insect, methods of causing damage, the active period of the insect from mid-July to mid-October, the economic threat level (ETL) of the insect and methods of identifying it, and the importance of pheromone traps in obtaining information about male moths and destroying them for the control of pink caterpillar.
The farmer is scared
This time, the cash crop BT cotton is cultivated in an area of 2,43,621 hectares in Sri Ganganagar block. Last year, the pink bollworm infestation was so severe that 20 to 90 percent of the cotton crop was destroyed. Due to this, the agriculture department and farmers have been in fear since the beginning. Due to this, cotton sowing in Sri Ganganagar block (Sri Ganganagar, Hanumangarh and the newly formed Anupgarh district) has decreased by 1 lakh 76 thousand 919 hectares.
