Cotton farmers sensitised to pest control practices

Bathinda, May 16

A one-day training programme was held today for cotton farmers with emphasis on pink boll worm monitoring through pheromone-based traps by the Central Integrated Pest Management Centre, Jalandhar, at Chief Agriculture Officer’s office in Bathinda.

In this programme, many progressive farmers and ten state Agriculture Department functionaries participated as trainees. During the programme, the trainees were imparted knowledge about National Pest Surveillance System (NPSS) — importance, demonstration of NPSS mobile app, data collection through app, major pest & diseases, Integrated Pest Management (IPM) practices, natural enemies and biocontrol agents, survey, surveillance and sampling, use of traps and specially identification, life cycle & biology of pink boll worm, field demonstration on installation of pheromone trapes in monitoring of pink boll worm in cotton and data collection through installed pheromone traps through lectures by different experts and demonstration by field visit.

Dr PC Bhardwaj, in-charge of the centre,made the trainees aware about concept and need for integrated pest management. He emphasised the need to manage insect-pest of cotton crop by adopting all Integrated Pest Management tools in a compatible manner to avoid environmental pollution and ill effects of pesticides. Dr Gurmeet Singh, professor, Extension Education at Punjab Agricultural University, Krishi Vigyan Kendra Bathinda, made the attendees aware about the precautions to be taken while sowing the cotton crop.