After India CM’s overture, state gets offer for agro-chemical units

Date:04-25-2017

Consequent upon the April 11 Mumbai visit of Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh to woo industrialists to make investments in Punjab, Crop Care Federation of India and UPL Chairman Rajju Shroff in a meeting with the Chief Minister on Wednesday, offered to expand and set up new units of agro chemicals industry in Punjab. The CM assured them of full assistance and cooperation and planned with Rajju Shroff and his experts the crop diversification programme for the coming Kharif season by increasing the area under cultivation of cotton.

Under this programme, the cotton crop will be made free from the attack of whitefly as a result of which the area under the crop will go up from the last year's 2.5 lakh hectares to 4.75 lakh hectares. To encourage the growers for growing this white crop, the use of Flonicamid (Ulala), which is recommended by the PAU for complete control of whitefly, will be increased as due to the whitefly attack, the productivity of cotton in 2015-16 had gone down to 197-kg lint per hectare.

It is also targeted to augment it to 800 kg per hectare. The UPL will provide 165 AFS spray machines to cover large areas and along with the state government will appoint scouts and increase the strength of its Adarsh Centres to monitor and advise farmers to survey their crops regularly so as to resort to spray the crop if the appearance of white flies is more than six per leaf. It is also proposed to undertake sprays on large areas simultaneously at one time.

Shroff apprised the Chief Minister of its collaborative programme being undertaken along with the PAU. He agreed to increase the strength of UPL's Unit Marts Farm Advisory Solution Centres, which are working at Abohar and Jandiala Guru (Amritsar). The Chief Minister emphasised on cutting the cultivation costs and enhancing productivity to increase the farmers' income. He advised the Crop Care Federation, PAU and the Agricultural Department to work together in this campaign.