MULTAN, Sept 10: Cotton production this year is likely to fall short of the official target of 15m bales owing to a number of factors, including pest pressure, shedding of fruiting bodies and relatively less growth of the plants as compared to previous years. This was what transpired in the fortnightly meeting of the Cotton Crop Management Group held here on Saturday with provincial agriculture secretary Major Fayyaz Bashir (retd) in chair. “The crop picture this year is not very rosy,” the secretary observed in his concluding remarks.

Heads of various wings of the provincial agriculture department, senior officials of the irrigation department and Wapda and representatives of growers and pesticides firm were also present.

The director-general of the agriculture department’s extension wing, Chaudhry Abdul Ghaffar, told the meeting that proliferation of American and Army bollworms would be a serious threat to the crop in the next two weeks. He said the spread of the two economically pernicious pests this year was more than the last year. He said it had been observed that the average height of the cotton plant this year was less than its desired height to get better per acre yield. Moreover, he added, the shedding of fruiting bodies owing to fluctuation in temperature would also leave an adverse effect on the crop.

A growers’ representative pointed out that flower setting at the top of the plants was being widely observed at a stage when it was supposed to grow further.

Experts in general view the phenomenon of flower setting at the top as an end of the cotton plant growth.

Pest warning and pesticides quality control director Dr Ijaz Pervaiz said that the recent spell of rains might help the plant growth but the subsequent weather conditions would also prove conducive for the multiplication of American and Army bollworms. In his report, he endorsed the observations of the DG agriculture (extension) viz-a-viz fruiting and plant height but said the number of plants per acre had increased this year as compared to the last year.

Crop reporting director Mr Baloch apprised the meeting that on an average the plants per acre this year were 20,000 as against 19,000 last year. The meeting spent a lot of time to discuss the spread of what is being described as the latest threat to the crop called ‘Mealy Bug’. Experts informed the meeting that the infestation of Mealy Bug this year in some areas of the cotton zone in Punjab had really bothered both the growers and scientists. Entomologist Dr Ghulam Mustafa of the Ayub Agriculture Research Institute presented a detail report on the emergence of the menace.

He said that the cotton plant under attack of Mealy Bug would become stunted and dried in some cases. He recommended insecticides Profenofos 50EC, Chlorpyripfos and Acetamiprid to combat the menace. He said if mixed with detergent powder the recommended insecticides would give even better results.

Some of the growers’ representatives however were of the view that Mealy Bug had been in the cotton fields for the last five years and hence was not a new phenomenon. They however agreed that it could be a big issue as compared to other cotton pests.

Representatives of the pesticides firms told the meeting that the inventory of the insecticides with them was more than sufficient to meet the expected demand for them in final stage of the crop. “We are rather expecting carryover stocks at the end of the season,” said a representative of Pakistan Crop Protection Association.