Bio-pesticide can help fight locusts, says progressive farmer

Some strains of fungus proved effective, he claims

Kongara Ramesh , a progressive farmer and researcher, during an interview with The Hindu on biopesticides to prevent locust attacks, at Tarluvada villege near Visakhapatnam.

Adding to the woes of the farming community, locusts pose a grave threat to crops in various parts of the country and the insects have now start invading the Telugu States too. In a bid to mitigate the problem, a progressive farmer in the district has come out with an alternative.

According to the farmer, Kongara Ramesh, bio-pesticides can provide a lasting solution to the recurring problem of locusts. Their advantage is that they kill the pests while being harmless to humans, birds and other animals, he says.

Ramesh from Guntur district made Tarluvada of Anandapuram mandal in Visakhaptnam district his home in 1990. He set up a farm – Navaneetha Evergreens – in the village and has since been experimenting on crops and pests. On knowing about his good work, scientists and experts in the field from different parts of the country have visited his farm, interacted with him and have done joint research.

Studies

During the late 1970s, when he was in Guntur, Mr. Ramesh observed that a fungus was killing a pest that was attacking cotton crop. After he shifted to Visakhapatnam, he took the help of researchers from Andhra University and GITAM Institute of Technology to study the effect of fungal entomopathogen on bollworm.

“They were content with publishing research papers and obtaining Ph.D degrees but did not evince interest in developing a bio-pesticide to help farmers fight pest attacks,” Mr. Ramesh told The Hindu .

Experiment

He set up a simple lab on his farm and found that some strains of the fungus beauveria, nomuraea and metarhizium can effectively target certain varieties of locusts but felt more research and scientific analysis was needed to arrive at the exact fungal strain for isolation.

“The research on efficacy of fungal strains on cotton pests has proved that they work on insects, including locusts, that have chitin (a primary component of exoskeleton ),” he claims.

“When locusts eat the leaves sprayed with the spores of fungus, it rapidly multiplies in the body of the locust, causing its death,” he says.

“With the monsoon expected to arrive in a few days, this is the right time to use the bio-pesticide to kill the pest and the larvae to prevent their proliferation,” he says. The strains have been isolated and are said to be used in South Africa and Brazil. The Government of India can procure the strains from those countries, he adds.