CHANDIGARH – Stung by the massive cotton crop damage due to the whitefly attack last year, the Punjab Government is asking farmers to sow indigenous varieties along with Bt cotton in the sowing season beginning later this month.
At camps organised today in Mansa, Bathinda, Barnala and Sangrur districts, agriculture officials advised farmers to adopt whitefly-resistant varieties. The Centre had recently asked Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan to revive such varieties.
“Yes, we are promoting varieties of domestic cotton. It is largely aimed at preventing large-scale destruction of the cotton crop in future due to factors such as the whitefly attack,” said Director, Agriculture, Dr JS Bains.
However, past years’ trends of sowing of indigenous varieties are not encouraging.
“Since the introduction of Bt cotton in the mid-2000s, the area under domestic varieties has declined sharply. For the past around 7-8 years, such varieties were sown only on 1.5-2 per cent of the area under cotton cultivation. Farmers are not receptive to them due to economic and management constraints,” said a senior officer.
“We are expecting a marginal rise in area — not more than 3 per cent,” he added.
Although farm experiments have shown that per-hectare yield of domestic varieties is nearly equal to that of Bt cotton, the former require almost double the cycles of cotton-picking than Bt cotton. “Farmers sowing domestic cotton have to spend double on labour for flower picking,” said a senior cotton scientist.
