MULTAN City News

Unfavourable weather, pest attack:
Cotton crop yield goes down massively
From Nadeem Shah
MULTAN: Unfavourable weather conditions and pest attacks may reduce the cotton crop yield massively in south Punjab cotton sowing areas in the current year, fear the cotton growers.
The cotton leaf curl virus (CLCuV) and whitefly attacks have played key role in destroying the crop after the cotton varieties failed to resist attacks, say the growers.
The farmers hold poor research, seed mafia and inefficient cotton varieties responsible for crop destruction and low yield. Any cotton variety needs sufficient time for research, but researchers introduce immature varieties every year that fail to resist bad weather, allege growers.
A grower Khalid Khokhar, who own cotton fields in Multan and Khanewal areas, fear 50 per cent crop damage this year compared to last year’s production. The agriculture has been on low priority of the government and it further went down on the priority list after 18th Amendment and decentralisation of agriculture to provinces.
Nasir Jaferi says that cotton crop has totally been destroyed in his town, Jalalpur Pirwala, which is known for cotton production. He said crop has been destroyed mainly because of substandard seed, rains and pest attack.
Growers say whitefly attack has become more virulent and growers have suffered huge financial losses. Farmers have themselves destroyed the crop as the attack had become unmanageable. At this stage, no other crop can be sown, as basmati transplantation season is also over now, they say. It is hard to achieve the target of 15.49 million bales this year, Jaferi believes.
The cotton crop assessment committee (CCAC) has twice revised downward the cotton production estimates to 13.38 million bales against the initial estimate of 15.49 million bales for the current season (2015-16), agriculture officials say. The cotton sowing target has already been missed by 10pc due to unprecedented rains at early sowing time.
Khalid Khokhar says the poor seed varieties have failed to resist whitefly and CLCuV. He demanded the government probe into research failures in curbing the virus despite allocation of heavy research budgets. The attacks of mealy bug and CLCuV on standing cotton crop have turned more severe in the country. The unavailability of certified seed and the use of pesticides not as per the requirement of the crop have negatively impacted on crop output, he said.
Agriculture experts say the CLCuV originated in Punjab near Multan 1985. By the 1990s, CLCuV had become the major threat to cotton production in Pakistan and it has now spread into India and, more recently, south and west into other provinces of Pakistan. The very characteristic symptoms include leaf curling, darkened veins, vein swelling and enations that frequently develop into cup-shaped, leaf-like structures on the undersides of leaves.
Agriculture officials say the government had set cotton target for 2015-16 at 15.49 million bales from 7.7 million acres. Punjab was projected to produce 10.5 million bales from 6 million acres. The province has missed the sowing target and sowed cotton on 5.6 million acres, registering a decline of about 6pc.
Sindh was projected to produce 4.4 million bales from 1.6 million acres. The sowing was on 1.4 million acres thereby missing the target by 10pc. After the monsoon rains and floods, the production estimate was revised downward to 3.5 million bales as standing crops on about 0.3 million acres were damaged. The projected estimate is likely to be revised downward to 3 million bales after CLCuV has badly affected the crop.
Balochistan is projected to produce 0.59 million bales from 0.1 million acres and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa 0.0015 million bales from 0.001 million acres, with no significant changes.