MULTAN, July 27: The Cotton Crop Working Group which met here on Tuesday is satisfied with the present crop situation.

The meeting was chaired by Chief Minister's adviser on agriculture MNA Jehangir Tareen while senior officials of various agriculture departments and research institutes were also present besides representatives of farming community and the pesticides business.

The meeting observed that overall the pest pressure in cotton fields this year was well under control while the weather conditions were also relatively better as compared to the last year. It was claimed that the cotton acreage this year had exceeded by 10 per cent as against the target.

However, the growers were advised to conduct pest scouting of their fields on regular basis and apply relevant pesticides wherever they found attack of a particular pest above the economic threshold level.

Expressing satisfaction over the current availability of pesticides in the market, the CCWG directed the pesticides firms to ensure smooth supply of their products throughout the season.

Growers' representatives complained that most of the pesticides firms had arbitrarily increased prices of their products despite the fact that the government had announced certain incentives for the pesticides industry that included three per cent reduction in the GST in the budget for the financial year 2004-05.

The representatives of the pesticides industry however refuted the growers' claim. The growers also expressed concern over the falling cotton prices in the international market and their likely impact on the domestic market.

The CM's adviser, however, assured them that the government would ensure that the price did not fall below the support price of Rs925 per 40kg. The meeting discussed at length the resurgence of the economically pernicious Cotton Leaf Curl Virus, which now had been named the Bureywala Strain of Cotton Virus, and the ongoing research to combat the menace.

A grower from Bureywala, Qazi Abdul Razzaq however objected to the new title of the cotton virus and insisted that it was the same virus that hit the cotton fields in early 1990s.

At this, it was decided that the National Institute of Biology and Genetic Engineering would submit a report over the cotton virus controversy in the next fortnightly meeting of the CCWG.

Another grower Khwaja Muhammad Shoaib pointed out that the farming community had so far been told by the agricultural scientists that White Fly played the role of a vector to spread CLCV from one field to another but, according to the report presented by the provincial director, pest warning, the incidence of CLCV this year was less in the areas having relatively high WF population and vice versa.

The experts present in the meeting however could not give a satisfactory explanation of the phenomenon.