Islamabad - Cotton Commissioner (CC) Dr.Khaild Abdullah has said that Cotton stainer was a future threat to Pakistan because when a cropping system is shifted to a better one or new crop introduced may lead to a serous problem.
He told reporters Cotton Commissioner of Textile Ministry Dr.Khaild Abdullah said that Shifting from Desi cotton to American cotton resulted in various sucking and chewing pests, Barani agriculture to irrigated agriculture brought up weed problem, introduction of pesticides resulted in lowering beneficial insects and insecticide resistance issue etc.
“Bacillus thuringiensis (BT) cotton is a soil inhabitant bacterium that produces a toxin which has insecticidal activity. This toxin is only effective against lepidopterist insects or worm or caterpillars or locally known as Sundies,”he said, adding that after the discovery of its insecticidal activity, the bacterium was used to kill insects by spraying its solution in early days. Later on, using biotechnology tools, the gene responsible for the production of toxin was isolated and incorporated to cotton, corn, soybean and other crops or vegetables to enable them, through an inbuilt mechanism, to fight against worms or Sundies.
He said that Cotton in Pakistan was mainly damaged by number of Sundies like spotted bollworms, American bollworms, pink bollworms, army worms etc, and mostly cotton growers could not overcome these worms due to number of reasons, and end up great yield losses. With the Introduction of Bt cotton, the worms are no longer an issue; substantially increased the yield; raised farm’ income; enabled cotton crop to stay for longer period without fear of pink bollworm. On the other hand, insecticides used for the control of worms in cotton substantially reduced and resulted in so called “imbalance” of cotton ecosystem.
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