Tamil Nadu

Weeds wreak havoc with farm produce

CHIDAMBARAM: India suffers an annual loss of Rs. 20,000 crore-worth agriculture produce, six per cent of the total food production, owing to weed infestation, according to W.R. Reddy, Joint Secretary (Plant Protection), Union Ministry of Agriculture.

At a regional training workshop on “Weed risk assessment” organised by the Food and Agriculture Organisation and Annamalai University here, he called for a national plan to combat the weed menace. Neither weeds nor pests respected the boundaries, and even the slightest favourable climatic condition would help their growth.

The presence of phalaris minor had curtailed wheat production by five million tonnes a year, almost equal to the quantity of imports. Last year, India imported six million tonnes of wheat, and five million tonnes this year.

There used to be a conflict among countries on the perception of weed risk assessment. If the imported wheat with weed components were used for milling immediately on arrival, as was being done in other countries, there would be no risk.

But, in India, the imported wheat ought to be distributed all over the country through the public distribution system. Hence, the risk was high. The major weeds such as phalaris minor, and parthenium or congress grass were wreaking havoc.

He said the National Plant Protection Organisation had been analysing the country-specific weed risks. The ingress of weeds would be either inadvertent or due to inadequate quarantine procedures. The consumption of weedicides and pesticides had tripled in the last five years. Therefore, the focus should be on issues such as entry, establishment, spread, production potential and numerical rating of the weeds. He called for improving collaboration among countries to fight the weed menace.

N.T. Yaduraju, National Coordinator, Indian Council for Scientific Research, said it required enormous infrastructure to deal with the phenomenal number of weeds. With the World Trade Organisation sneering at non-tariff barriers and seeds coming under the open general licence, the challenge of containing weed menace was a daunting one.

Ricardo Labrada Romero, Weed Officer, FAO, Rome, called upon the delegates to focus preventing the entry of invasive weeds, and the post-entry management practices.

L.B. Venkatrangan, Vice-Chancellor, G. Kuppuswamy, Dean, Faculty of Agriculture, and Rm. Kathiresan, Professor of Agronomy, attended.

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