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Skills for producing quality mango
By
Bilal Hassan
PLANT
protection is essential to enhance agriculture output
and to improve quality of crop produce. The government
has placed plant protection, integrated pest management
and disease control on high priority.
Besides,encouraging domestic scientists, assistance is
also being sought from foreign scientists in this
regard. Launching of agriculture linkage programme with
the help of Australia is an example in this direction.
The programme is being initiated to control pests and
diseases that inflict serious quantitative and
qualitative damages to mango crop, evolve improved
detection and management strategies for sudden death
syndrome disease in this fruit and other critical pests
detrimental to this crop. The government wants to help
the growers to produce international-quality mangoes to
increase its export and earn foreign exchange.
Pakistan earns about $24 million annually from mango
export. Around 60-70 per cent good quality fruit is
exported to the Middle Eastern countries, followed by
15-16 per cent to European countries. The total export
varies from year to year. There is a big potential for
export of Pakistani mango in world market. Need is to
enhance production and quality of the fruit.. This could
be possible only by adopting modern orchard management
techniques.
Mango is the second major fruit crop, grown on an area
of over 93,000 hectares with a production of 915,000
tones. The area under mango crop has increased but the
rise in production is comparatively low mainly due to
diseases.
In Punjab, the main mango-growing districts are Multan,
Rahim Yar Khan, Muzaffargarh, Bahawalpur, D.G Khan,
Sujaabad, Kabirwala, and Khanewal. Besides these
Sahiwal, Vehari, Okara, Faisalabad, Jhang, Toba Tek
Singh and Sargodha are other important mango-growing
areas in this province. In Sindh it is mainly grown in
Mirpurkhas, Hyderabad, Nawabshah, Naushahro Feroz,
Thatta and Khairpur. In NWFP it is largely grown in
Peshawar and Mardan.
Since diseases are the main enemies of mango plant, its
orchards suffer from a number of diseases. For example,
three diseases namely powdery mildew, blossom blight and
anthracnose attacked mango orchards at an early stage of
flowering.
Disease damage varies from mild to severe depending upon
weather conditions and management level. Orchard growers
resort to as many as six to seven sprays that add to
high cost of producing mango. Yet they remain unable to
limit damage.
The powdery mildew appears from January to March. High
humidity supported by rains and high temperature cause
widespread problem of this disease. The disease is
characterised by superficial whitish grey mycelia
growth, initially appearing on flowers and buds. Later
the fungus spreads to fruit, leaves, shoots and trunk.
The whole surface of the affected flowers and young
fruit gets covered with a powdery substance consisting
of millions of spores.
It necessitates adopting preventive and curative
measures for the control of diseases. Proper research
work is essential. Such varieties must be introduced
using germplasm of broad base, which are resistant to
diseases. It was disappointing that not a single
commercial variety of mango was found resistant against
quick decline a few years back and the growers cut down
orchards due to quick mortality of mango trees.
Unless recommended cultivars are planted in specific
agro-ecological zones, diseases would continue damaging
the crop and would be difficult to control. For
instance, quick decline disease was more devastating for
canal-irrigated orchids but what was the cause of the
prevalence of this disease in these areas is still
unknown.
The common practice is to apply high doses of
nitrogenous fertilisers. On the other, excessive
nitrogen application causes disease spread. Improper
application of fertilisers, sanitation of orchards and
untimely pruning of trees enhances infection and growth
of the disease-causing fungus, the growers are largely
unaware.
The growers lack requisite spraying skills. Lack of
knowledge on the part of growers about recommended
sprays, interval of spraying, handling of sprayers,
timing of spray, number of sprays, dose and growth stage
are hindering timely and effective control of diseases.
It is, therefore, essential to developed integrated
orchard management packages to reduce disease, improve
fruit quality, reduce biennial bearing and improve mango
supply chain in the country.
In this context, agriculture linkage programme that
would be implemented for three years in two major
mango-producing provinces Sindh and Punjab with
technical assistance from Australian Centre for
International Agriculture Research augurs well for the
mango growers. Under the programme, all stockholders,
extension officers, growers and contractors would get
opportunity to help enhance their capacity for better
crop management and quality production.
Major objective attached with the programme is to
develop integrated orchard management packages to reduce
disease, improve fruit quality, reduce biennial bearing
and improve mango supply chain in the country.
Three members team headed by Dr Cheys Akem would visit
different mango-growing areas across the two provinces
and research institutes as well. Slow decline or
dieback, quick back and sudden death of mango trees are
causing devastation to mango orchards. The programme
would greatly help in controlling the expanding disease.
Under the programme, improvement of nursery system would
be developed for the production of high quality
disease-free planting material for mango crop. This all
would benefit the growers of mango who are losing
millions in the backdrop of serious losses owing to
disease attack.
Courtesy: The DAWN |
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