Additional Secretary Agriculture (Task Force) Rana Ali Rashid has termed the unavailability of high quality effective pesticide as an important challenge faced by the cotton crop. He urged the stakeholders concerned to play a practical and effective role to resolve these issues. Rana Arshad was presiding over a joint meeting of the pesticides and technical advisory committee. Director General (Pest Warning & Quality Control) Syed Zafar Yab Haider, Professor Dr Shafqat Saeed and others attended the meeting.

Rana Arshad stressed the need for taking steps on emergent meeting for revival of cotton crop and well being of its farmers on permanent basis. He said steps should be taken to revive the confidence of cotton growers and making the crop profitable as compared to alternative crops.

He said it is clear that pests have developed resistance against pesticides. He said pesticides companies are being offered to setup service centre at Union Council level where pesticides and trained spray workers are available to control the pests in field. He asked the industries to give its suggestions about the pesticides to reach some consensus decision and devise a joint strategy to tackle the issue. The meeting on this occasion finalized the recommendations for first 15 days of October for the cotton crop.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2019