The dreaded cotton crop pest, pink bollworm, has made it appearance in some fields near Ponnari village in Tamsi mandal of Adilabad district, galvanising agriculture scientists to initiate measures to control its spread. The pest was noticed for the first time on August 5 in flowers in the plants in an extent of a few acres of long duration type cotton where farmers had gone in for early sowing depending upon irrigation.
“The pest could affect the short duration cotton variety in nearby fields in the next 10 to 15 days when that crop comes to flowering stage,” warned Principal Scientist, Adilabad Agriculture Research Station, Sreedhar Chauhan. “The farmers in whose fields the pink bollworm incidence was noticed need to initiate control measures to curb the spread of pest to nearby fields,” he suggested.
A team of agriculture scientists, including Mr. Chauhan, Coordinator of the District Agriculture Advisory and Technology Transfer Centre (DAATTC) Sudhanshu Kasbe and Crop Protection Scientist in DAATTC D. Veeranna, visited the infested fields on Tuesday. Though they estimated the incidence of pest to be above the economic threshold level (ETL), they opined it was not a panic situation.
“The pest can be controlled provided farmers initiate integrated pest management measures at community level. Setting up of pheromones traps, manually destroying the infested rosette flowers and judicious use of neem seed kernel extract as pesticide at this stage,” Mr. Kasbe advised.
Community involvement
Initiation of control measures at community level is essential to continue till September to prevent pest attack October onwards when the temperature decreases. “The incidence in that duration could cause more damage to the crop,” the scientists said. The cotton seed companies have introduced the refusia-in-bag (RIB) method of packaging 5 % of the pest attracting non Bt cotton seeds with Bt seeds this year onwards so that the incidence of pest is deflected to the former. “There, however, is no way of telling if the pest has attacked the 5 % non Bt plants or the regular Bt plants at this stage,” the scientists observed.