Sambalpur: The Odisha government has decided to replace the pesticides presently used to control Brown Plant Hopper (Chakada Poka) with new ones.
The decision was taken at a high level meeting Thursday chaired by the nodal officer for Sambalpur district-cum-Agriculture Secretary Saurav Garg.
Garg said the decision to change the pesticide was taken in consultation with the experts as the plant hopper has developed resistance to the pesticides used now.
Sambalpur Deputy Director of Agriculture (DDA) Khagendra Jena said the old pesticides like Bufrophejin, Fipronil, Diclorovus have become obsolete and in their place Flonicamide, Pymatrojin and Dinotifuron could be used for better results.
“But we wait for the approval from the state level technical committee (SLTC) for these products,” Jena added.
Garg asked the officers present at the meeting to launch a massive awareness drive on “Chakada Poka” menace and issue guidelines as and when the farmers need it.
He further asked the VLWs to go to the panchayats every week and interact with the farmers on their problems.
The secretary assured that there would be no problem of seed for the coming season and sufficient Urea stock would be there in advance to meet the requirement.
Last year several hundred hectares of crop was damaged due to the attack of Brown Plant Hopper mostly in western Odisha where farmers set their crop on fire and in some cases had committed suicide unable to bear the crop loss due to the pest attack.
UNI
