23/11/2020
For Farmers/Orchardists..
🌿🍎🍏🍒🍐🍑🍓
It is very disappointing to listen always some people blaming sub standard pesticides, pesticide retailers and horticulture department for the reasons behind scabe epidemic which lead to decline in apple Prouction valley this year.
In fact, many other reasons which were peculiar this year are almost 90% responsible for the low apple production and vast scabe infection through out Kashmir..major reasons to note are as under;
1. Due to early snowfall last year on 6-7 Nov 2019 the infected leaves and fruits remained in orchards which is the primary source of scabe and Alternaria infection that brought ahead the high load of inoculum which entered easily this year durring favourable conditions..
2. Spring season of 2020 passed mostly rainyrainy, with the increase in temperature durring March April and high humidity with air waves and rains the scabe infected more vigorously where the spray of pesticides ddid not even succeed in its control properly..
3. The administrative lockdown implemented on 23rd of march 2020 in Kashmir and due to the threat of Covid 19 Pandemic, unavailability of pesticides, usage of expired pesticides, missed sprays, and non technical guidance for pest management lead to little care for orchards from March to June by farmers this year which resulted in the epidemic and then the infection persisted through out the year with periodic waves across boundaries of villages and orchard peripheries.
But there are hundreds of growers who had double production than previous year with zero or 1-5 percent disease infection question is why and How
We know Advance science and forecasting parameters have great role to maximize the production with great quality as my self predicts the overall scab infection in the first week of march by taking help of different forecasting and eye vision of last year inoculum
For fruit setting we know that we have improper pollination ratio so I upload the videos on pink bud stage how to make benefit use of hand pollination and importance of different tonics at different phonological stages
The growers which followed the timely advices crossed the BC ratio of obout 1:7
Now,I request Orchardist community to understand and keep in mind these reasons to curb such problems in future..
However it is an open fact that the sub standard/Spurious pesticide business exist like other mafias , and concerned agencies are doing their duties as per their portfolio to curb such unlawful activities..
