India:Odisha govt to use new pesticide to check Brown Plant Hopper attack on crop

The Odisha government has decided to replace the present pesticides used to control Brown Plant Hopper (Chakada Poka) with a new one.

The decision was taken at a high level meeting on Thursday chaired by the nodal officer for Sambalpur district cum Agriculture Secretary Saurav Garg.

Mr Garg said the decision to change the pesticide was taken in consultation with the experts as the plant hopper have developed resistance to pesticide used now.

Sambalpur Deputy Director of Agriculture (DDA) Khagendra Jena said the old pesticides like Bufrophejin, Fipronil, Diclorovus have become obsolete ones and in its 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," Mr Jena added.

Mr Garg asked the officers present at the meeting to launch a massive awareness drives on "Chakada Poka" menace and give immediate guidelines as and when the farmers need it.

He further asked the VLWs to go 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 the several hundred hectares of crop was damaged due to the attack of Brown plant hopper mostly in Western Odisha where farmers have set their crop on fire and in some cases the farmers had committed suicide unable to bear the crop loss due to the pest attack.