A statement from the department has come two years after some arecanut growers began using them to control the blight.
Yogesh
H.R., Deputy Director, Department of Horticulture, Dakshina Kannada,
those solutions were being sold under different brand names but all
start with Bio…
He said in a release that the
department received complaints from some farmers who used the solution.
The farmers complained that there was pre-maturity of crop, nut
dropping, withering of leaves and drop in production after spraying the
solutions.
Mr. Yogesh said that the department or any
other government department had not recommended their spray to control
the blight. No research had been done on the side affects of the
solutions.
The release said that those said to be organic solutions had not been registered under Insecticides Act, 1968.
If farmers continued to spray those solutions and incurred loss, the department would not pay them any compensation.
At
a conference organised by the Central Arecanut and Cocoa Marketing and
Processing Cooperative Ltd. (Campco) here on April 25, 2012, Ignatius
D’Souza of Bejai, a dealer of farm products, had drawn the attention of
all on the legal aspect of selling those solutions. He had said that
information obtained by him under the RTI Act from the Directorate of
Plant Protection, Quarantine and Storage under the Union Department of
Agriculture and Cooperation revealed that use of potassium phosphonate
in the country, said to be a major ingredient in those ‘organic’
solutions sold under different brand names starting with Bio …, was not
allowed as per Insecticides Act, 1968.
Source: http://tinyurl.com/m6akswz
Post a Comment