Desert locusts attacks led Pakistan in rough pitch due to the harm to agricultural crops.
Desert locusts attacks led Pakistan in rough pitch due to the enormous harm they are causing to the agricultural crops. There is a chance of Pakistan losing $8.71 billion worth of agricultural crops during the summer season in case locusts destroyed 75 per cent of the standing crops.
Dr Inayatullah, adviser to the Pakistan Agriculture Research Council, said that this year the locust attacks in Pakistan are of critical nature with a harm agricultural crops. There is desperate need of collaboration of both federal as well as provincial government departments for the immediate elimination of locust swarms which are multiplying day by day in billions.
It is estimated that if 25 per cent of the crops were damaged during the current season, the loss would be $2.9 billion and if 50 per cent crops were eaten up by locusts, the losses would be around $5.8 billion.
“Monitoring of locust and spraying breeding sites in Pakistan used to be a regular activity, but last year the opportunity was missed. Consequently, the country is facing the worst attack of the desert locust, which is present in 60 districts of all the provinces,” commented Dr. Inayatullah.
In order to tackle the situation pesticides spray is being carried out through special aircraft donated by China very recently.
Although it is not a new scenario since locusts attacks happened thousands of years ago in Egypt during the Pharoahs period as it is transparently mentioned in the Holy Islamis scriptures. In the 20th century, these attacks started in African countries in year 1993 and then it paved its path to Asian countries.
A number of chemicals commonly refer to as Pheromone or Semiochemicals, are released by each and every locust which helps in bringing the mates together in order to keep the nymphs and adults together and this signal all the nymphs to grow and mature together and become ready for fight.
But once the season is over, the locusts can no more produce aggregation pheromones but instead they produce antibodies. Such that they disperse as the season is not suitable for their reproduction and this is termed as”the recession stage“.
“Once the season is over, the locusts no more produce aggregation pheromones but produce antibodies, so that they disperse as the season is not favourable for their reproduction and this is called a recession stage,” Dr. Inayatullah explained.