Faith in cotton technology is a necessity


Early this week, I got a call from Dr. Anil Kolhe, renowned entomologist of Dr. Panjabrao Deshmukh Agricultural University to inform success of the campaign to control the pink bollworm in Bt cotton in Vidarbha, the rainfed cotton growing tract. As an entomologist, he as well as many others toiled hard to educate the farmers about the integrated approach to control the pink bollworm not only in Vidarbha, but also other areas of Maharashtra state that had witnessed huge losses in 2017. They carried out surveys for incidence of pink bollworm, talked about monitoring the pest regularly with pheromone traps, asked the farmers to be more discreet to use only approved insecticides and harvest the crop preferably avoiding prolonging crop season. The last operation turned out to be blessing in disguise as residual moisture in the soil was not enough to carry on the crop after November-December, as many localities had not received rains even from September onwards.
The Government of Maharashtra (and should be true for other state Governments) on its part carried out huge educational programme on integrated pest management of cotton, coupled with raids on seed producers and stockists to control planting of illegal herbicide tolerant transgenic cotton. In 2017, about one-half million or even more packets of herbicide tolerant transgenic cotton were sold, and many farmers succumbed to the idea of growing illegal herbicide tolerant cotton. Furthermore, Government banned glyphosate, popular herbicide, during crop season so that farmers do not get benefit of using herbicide tolerant transgenic cotton and thus penalizing them to realise their mistake of growing illegal cotton. Government also raided stockists and distributors dealing with pesticides so that the sub-standard pesticides are not made available in the market.
Considering the fact that 2017 saw illegal herbicide tolerant cotton, deaths due to misuse of insecticides especially in Yavatmal district, and high incidence of pink bollworm on Bt cotton, as the pest showing resistance to Bt toxins; even the non-Governmental organizations took responsibility of extension work for management of pink bollworm in Bt cotton. Our own NGO, South Asia Biotechnology Centre (SABC) came up with large-scale campaign spreading message of integrated pest management from village to village in many localities. Dr. C.D. Mayee, President and Dr. Bhagirath Choudhary, Director of SABC were relentless in this campaign, networking with other organizations to maximise impact of education on the farmers growing Bt cotton.
2017 and 2018 presented an unique research opportunity to the entomologists and other crop scientists to investigate the incidence of pink bollworm, relate it to the agro-ecological factors, evaluate the contribution of each component of pest management tactics, and also sort out as to how Bt cotton crop sustains yield as much as possible. This reminds me of studies (Carriere et al., 2017, J. Econ. Ent. 110 (June issue): 1345-1355) carried out on the relationship of pheromone catches with pink bollworm incidence and damage in Arizona, wherein more adult catches were significantly and positively associated with the pink bollworm infested bolls in non-Bt cotton, but not so in Bt cotton. Is our experience any different? How much crop was saved with these efforts? Can we impress upon the policy makers and those in the Government to decide the priorities in cotton farming? As Paul Ollerton, President of Arizona Cotton Growers Association says, “If we hadn’t got technological help, we would have been out of business years ago”  (Western Farm Press, March 14, 2018).
Anil Kolhe has also informed me that average output is about 5 quintal of seed cotton per acre. It will be 1.6-2.0 quintal per acre or about 4 to 5.0 quintal of lint cotton per hectare. In view of rain scarcity in the major cotton growing areas of Gujarat and Maharashtra (contributing more than 50% output), the Cotton Association of India has lowered this year’s (2019-20) output by about 12% lower than that of last year’s (2018-19) output of 36.5 million bales (170 kg lint cotton per bale) (Business Standard, Nov 17, 2018; livemint.com Dec. 6, 2018). It could be the lowest in the last 9-year.
Unfortunately, our efforts to control pink bollworm did not bring in expected yields as lack of rains became spoiler. But the important lessons learnt and to be learnt would linger on.


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