In a bid to check the menace of pink bollworm pest, which destroyed over 80 per cent of Bt cotton crop on 2.5 lakh acres in Raichur district, the Agriculture Department has started sanitising cotton fields.
Bt cotton residue is being burnt on the field to ensure that eggs and larvae of the dangerous pest are destroyed before the beginning of the next kharif season.
Cotton growers have already destroyed infected cotton stalks on their own, and officials are now visiting villages and encouraging them to burn the residue stalks in their presence. “Destroying cotton stalks and tilling the fields deep to expose the soil to sun are important measures for destroying eggs and larvae of pink bollworm. These precautions will drastically reduce the pest population in the next season,” N. Saraswathi, Joint Director of Agriculture (in-charge) told The Hindu at a cotton field outside Nelahal village in Raichur taluk on Tuesday.
“In the first phase, we took up sanitisation of cotton ginning mills. The officials from the Agriculture Department, along with scientists from University of Agricultural Sciences, Raichur, visited cotton ginning mills and ensured that the residues, including cotton seeds, were destroyed,” said R.G. Sandeep, Assistant Director of Agriculture, Raichur.
