TOBA TEK SINGH, Dec 7: An experts team of University of Agriculture Faisalabad (UAF) horticulture sciences institute has recently visited areas of the country and found all samples of citrus varieties contaminated by diseases.

Pakistan has 34 per cent share of the total citrus fruit of the world and after Sargodha district the best variety kinnoo is being produced by Toba Tek Singh. Owing to mismanagement and lack of modern techniques to save citrus plants and fruit from diseases, the country could not touch the maximum production of 25 to 30 ton per hectare (in America and Brazil) and get only nine to 10 ton.

Recently a Russian trade team made an agreement with Pakistani kinnoo exporters and decided to stay at Sargodha to check the quality before packing because of the bad repute of the spoiled exported fruit.

A decade ago, the Toba district had citrus orchards over 46,000 acres of land but irrigation water shortage and diseases reduced the orchards to only 20,000 acres.

Two years back, the government had launched Fruit and Vegetable Development Project (FVDP) to increase cultivation as a result the cultivated area reached 35,000 acres in current season.

An orchard owner ex-MPA, Mian Rafiq, told this correspondent that once he used to sell his 85-acre orchards for over Rs5.5 million every year, but after `destruction’ sale had shrunk to only Rs0.5 million per annum.

“Now after revival of orchards my sale is increasing and it has touched Rs3 million mark,” he said.

When contacted, FVDP deputy-director Mian Shafiq Muhammad claims that about 80 per cent plant diseases transfer from nursery so farmers have been motivated to purchase only healthy and canker-disease free plants.

He says the second main cause of low kinnoo production is the attack of fruitfly insect for which the only best remedy is that infested fruit must be buried deep into the soil up to three feet to stop production of the insect.

Mr Shafiq says female fruitfly stings citrus skin and penetrates eggs into the pulp where the larva grows. After attaining full size, it enters the soil from the fallen fruit and lies there in the form of pupae. When male and female fly emerge from pupae mate, its life cycle again continues.

Mian Shafiq says if all the farmers bury the infested fallen fruit into the earth, the fruit will be saved from fruitfly attack forever.

He says the same fruitfly has also hit guava and mango.