LAHORE: Worried by prospects of spread of a deadly whitefly attack, pest management teams of the Punjab Agriculture Department have resorted to cluster spray as experts estimate that, so far, around half of the standing crop in hotspot areas may have been damaged.

A spokesperson for the department said drones and high-pressure spray machines have been deployed to spray the affected as well as surrounding areas because the whitefly takes refuge in adjoining fields to escape the affects of pesticide.

On Wednesday, Agriculture Secretary Iftikhar Sahoo, as well as the top hierarchy of the extension and pest management wings, were present in the cotton belt to oversee the operation against the pest.

Dr Saghir Ahmed, former director of the Central Cotton Research Institute, said that the whitefly attack in hotspot areas had crossed the economic threshold mark, as around 100 bugs per leaf are being observed and no pesticide could recover the affected plants.

Experts say over 50pc of standing crop in affected areas may be damaged

Claiming that more than 50pc of the crop has been damaged, he does not think that Punjab will be able to achieve its target of 8.3 million bales this year.

Dr Ahmed, who is also chief scientist of the Tara Group, a pesticide company, said high temperature and poor watering, particularly in the salinity-hit fields, caused the outbreak of whitefly and mealybug.

A senior officer in the Pest Warning & Management Directorate, who requested not to be named, said that due to high temperature larvae of whitefly matured earlier than expected, and thus they could not use pesticides to check the menace in time.

But growers say that higher prices of pesticides and sky-high power tariffs prevented them from timely spray against the pests and running tube-wells to water their fields to lower land temperature as a measure against the pest attacks.

Ginning factories, meanwhile, are reporting a 50pc drop in the arrival of cotton and a 15pc cut in yield.

“Cotton arrival at ginning units and in the open market has almost been halved, partly because of the pest attack and partly because the growers are hoarding the produce in the hope of getting a better price in view of reports of drop in lint production in the local as well as international markets,” Cotton Ginners Forum chairman Ihsan-ul-Haq told Dawn.

He claimed that almost 15pc drop in cotton output is being reported from Rahim Yar Khan and other areas in the cotton belt.

By Aug 31, the country had harvested over 3.041m bales. Cotton Brokers Forum chairman Naseem Usman estimates that despite the cut in cotton arrivals the production ratio for the current season will be 67pc higher than last year’s figures up till Sept 15.

He, however, does not expect that the total lint output for the ongoing season will cross the 10m bales mark.

The Federal Committee on Agriculture had fixed the total cotton output target at 12.7m bales.

Meanwhile, Abid Hussain, director of agriculture (extension) DG Khan told Dawn on Wednesday that 89 acres of the area have been sprayed with four drones and 2,500 acres have been sprayed by power sprayer.

The total cotton production area in DG Khan is around 971,000 acres among which 369,000 acres of cotton production area is located in district Rajanpur.

Local sources confirmed to Dawn that around 20pc of cotton crop production areas have been completely destroyed by the whitefly attack while the remaining 10-20pc area is under mild attack and the situation can be improved once choppers, drones, and power sprayers jointly start operations in the affected areas.

Nasrullah Dreshak, a local cotton grower, informed Dawn that government eff­orts were focusing on bigger farmers while smaller growers having two-three acres of land needed more assistance in spraying against whitefly.

A local pesticide company dealer told Dawn that even private spray companies are not interested in starting any spray programme for small growers. They are providing assistance to growers having power sprayers or big landholdings.

In Bahawalnagar, according to deputy director of agriculture Chaudhry Latifullah, around 18,000 acres of cotton crop have been affected in just nine days. He said the whitefly onslaught was due to the shortage of canal water and hot weather.

Insufficient measures

On the other hand, farmers termed the measures taken by the agriculture and revenue departments regar­ding the prevention of whitefly attack as insufficient. They said that it was not a lack of canal water or hot and humid environment, but substandard seeds and “fake” pesticides that caused the growth and attack of whiteflies.

Speaking to Dawn, several farmer leaders, including the general secretary of the Punjab Kisan Board Bahawalnagar, said that with the connivance of the administration, substandard seeds and “fake” agricultural medicines were first provided to farmers and later compensation was given when the crops suffered from diseases.

They said that for the cotton crop, the farmers were in extreme need of urea fertiliser, which was not available anywhere at the official rate of Rs3,200 per bag, while the same bag was being sold openly in the black market for Rs4,500-5,000.

Shafiq Butt in Sahiwal, Tariq Saeed Birmani in D.G. Khan and Ejaz Mahmood in Bahawalnagar also contributed to this report

Published in Dawn, September 14th, 2023