MUZAFFARGARH, Aug 5: Cotton cultivators in the district claim having found an answer to fight mealybug, a lethal pest, and termite about which agriculture researchers have so far failed to make any headway.

In what they call a surprise discovery, the local farmers are using washing powder as pesticide and spray for cotton, claiming that the pest has been controlled to some extent. The other commonly used pesticides as recommended by the agriculture department for mealybug are Border and Perfinophos.

Mealybug is a pest that extracts liquid and water from the trunk of cotton plant that turns black and eventually fades away.

Malik Akhtar Abbas of Nawan Budh, who used washing powder on the cotton farm, observed that actually washing powder had some greasy elements which caused mealybug to fall from the plant. “And once the mealy bug falls, it has little strength to rise again and touch the cotton plant. The colour of pest is white and it is a small insect.”

He said he used the detergent as pesticide which helped a little in killing the small insect.

According to Malik Akhtar, a large number of farmers in Muzaffargarh, Multan, Dera Ghazi Khan and Layyah had been using washing powder to control the pest. Though it did not guarantee optimum results, it helped the farmers save the cotton crop.

Termites eat into the roots of cotton plants and make hole in their trunk. They attack a field in hundreds and the farmers claim that there is no effective pesticide available in the market to eradicate them.

Some farmers have started using kerosene oil to kill termite. They put a bottle full of kerosene oil at the starting point of a watercourse. The oil trickles down and mixes into the water drop by drop which proves lethal for termite.

This year, the attack of mealybug and termite has spread to vast areas of Muzaffargarh and thousands of farmers are convinced that washing powder and kerosene oil prove helpful treatment against the pests.

The cultivators regret that the agriculture department has done nothing to help the small farmers in this respect.

“We have never seen the agriculture department coming to our help,” said Nawaz Khan Baloch of Basti Balochan. He has cultivated 10 acres of cotton on rented land. He said last year an agriculture field assistant visited his fields along with dealers of certain pesticide companies. After inspecting his fields, he asked him (the farmer) to buy pesticides from a certain shop. Later, he said, the official did not appear again.

There are 108 field assistants in the agriculture department and their primary assignment is to guide farmers on various issues at the union council level.

District Officer Jamshaid Sindhu, however, said the government had given motorcycles to each field assistant so that he could reach farmers and offer timely assistance to them. But he admitted that there was no system to monitor field assistants despite the fact that they submitted progress reports daily.

He said mealybug was still a mystery and no pesticide had been prepared yet to fight it.