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'Sheesham’ disease stages a comeback
By Eftiqar Haider
TAHLI (Sheesham/ Dalbergia Sissoo) — a high quality broad
leaf, dark brown tree about 30 to 45 feet tall — has spread to
almost every area located at 120m to 1,250m above the sea
level owing to the environment of the sub-continent
 Punjab
apart, the genus Dalbergia has more than 300 species and many
other tropical and sub-tropical areas of Asia, Africa, South
Africa, Central America, South America and many more, share
the blessings of this luxuriantly growing tree. In Pakistan
and most of India, a species-Delbergia Sissoo, also named as
Sheesham or Tahli, are in abundance. While, in South East
Asia, Dalbergia Cochinchinensis, commonly known as, Trac is
found.
Sheesham is a world class timber treasured for its density,
colour, elasticity and durability of the wood, which weighs
830kg/m3 on drying. It is used for numerous purposes, ranging
from wooden teaspoons to boats, from agricultural
implementations to super structures. The multidimensional
character of Tahli brings it at par with Deodar (Cedrus
Deodara) and Purtal (Abies Pindrow) which meet almost 90 per
cent of the commercial, construction and industrial timber
needs of Pakistan.
It is a farmer-and-environment-friendly tree by increasing the
annual rainfalls, keeping the environment cool, and decreases
the ratio of wind evaporation which saves the atmosphere from
becoming dry. This provides immunity to inhabitants of such
areas from chest and respiratory diseases. The tree helps in
stabilizing canal banks and preventing soil erosions. Punjab’s
20.6 million ha of the upper Indus Plain is divided into five
forest areas which are riverain, irrigated, scrub, coniferous,
and trees on private lands.
Plantations in the irrigated lands began after developing
Changa Manga, Mirpur, Daphar, Khanewal, Kamalia, and
Cheechawatani. Tahli is a main species of riverain forest. The
ratio of Tahli/Mulberry (Morus Alba) here is 27 per cent,
poplar one per cent, eucalyptus 23 per cent and others 27 per
cent.
Tahli along with mulberry makes about 50 per cent of the
plantation with numerous benefits for social, economic and
physical environments. Besides, it provides fuel, small
timber, manure, leaf, and other economic needs of rural and
urban people. The tree shelters insectivorous birds and
protects them from winds.
A disease during the last 6/7 years has jeopardized the
blessing associated with this tree. Initially a single branch
vitiates and then the whole tree goes down unnoticed,
unattended, and unheard. According to the Punjab Forest
Department’s survey, about 70 per cent of the total trees are
affected, out of which two per cent is incurable. Despite
numerous Tahlis being vitiating at Mandra on the Grand Trunk
Road, the attitude of forest department is unsympathetic.
As the tree takes 30 to 60 years to mature and perhaps the
officials are too ambitious to wait and watch it growing once
in their life or service-time, they prefer eucalyptus though
it has been banned and takes five to seven years for cutting.
Same is the attitude towards plantation of indigenous trees
such as Keekar, Phulla, Neem, Chahra.
Most officials don’t know about the nature of disease Tahli
tree is suffering from. Many humbly admitted their
professional limitations while some are aware of it.
This is a ‘diabac disease’ they say. The effected tree starts
to vitiate from the top travelling down to roots, says a
representative of forest department. In addition he added, the
disease is affecting Thali for last 6/7 years. Though it
disappeared but is now making a comeback.
A plant pathologist says that the reason for depletion was a
fungus that frequently changes hosts and this time it has
singled out Tahli. In his opinion verticillium wilt disease is
working wherein water and root canal systems of the tree are
blocked thus ending the food making processes. The only remedy
is to develop a fungus-friendly species of Tahli. Rising
temperature in tropical zones also helps in spreading the wilt
disease.
A professor from the Agriculture University Faisalabad in 2003
had told this scribe that the Forestry Institute, Peshawar has
identified more than 60 pathogenic species of fungus living on
Tahlis, and that two to three per cent of the trees in the
Punjab were either dead or would wither away soon.
An official from the Forest Office, Rawalpindi said that Tahli
in Punjab is fast ebbing and laboratory tests of the parched
roots showed rotting of tap and lateral feeding roots, because
of the Fusarium fungus.
It may have resulted due to poor drainage and prolonged
water-logging during rains. Roots are the most vulnerable part
of a tree. In a waterlogged area the chances of fusarium are
very high, he said. These dead or drying trees must
immediately be felled down to avoid further nesting of
pathogens on healthy trees.
Depletion of the tree is endangering the physical, social, and
economic environment of the province. Its extinction on a
massive scale is certainly pregnant with dangerous
consequences for the country both on micro as well as macro
levels.
The issue becomes more significant as Pakistan has only 4.2
million hectares of forest area - with per capita forest not
more than 0.037 hectare, as against the world average of one
hectare. The demand of wood too, is rising by about 10 per
cent per year, and Tahli of course is the most sought after
furniture wood.
Endangered Tahli must be a revelation for the advocates of
eucalyptus monoculture plantations. Might one see how a
certain species can take hostage people and the environment?
More importantly, consumption patterns for wood and timber
among our rural and urban communities need a special
deliberation. The traditional self-contained village of Punjab
was never an isolated independent entity. A village was a
physical stage on which people performed and acted their
allocated roles, but the social processes, of which, these
people were a part had a broader physical range.
In economic and political terms, they were a part of a greater
whole and the whole was greater than the sum of its parts. It
was their way of life almost throughout the subcontinent and
the cooperation between different strata of society in a
village was never organized at a village level, instead at the
level of people who shared common economic interests.
For example, to fell a tree in a typical Punjab village was
the duty of cobbler, because he needed the upper layer of
Keekar tree to colour the shoe leather. Then carpenter sorted
out the firewood from the high quality wood for furniture. The
firewood was taken into custody of a cook for cooking purposes
and fire, so on and so forth - the tree was not the sole
property of anyone person or group - luckily there wasn’t any
forest department then - almost every member of the
traditional rural society had his economic interests
associated with a tree.
Owing to its extra qualities Tahli has always occupied the
imaginations of the Punjabi poets as women used to sit under a
shady Tahli to make a Tranjan (a social gathering of the women
of an area to do daily allocated importable routine works).
Things have changed. Cultural lags exits, but should we let
our Tahli trees to vitiate. Certainly not; to save our ecology
from further degradation, resulting from depletion of Tahli,
experts from Faisalabad-based Nuclear Institute of Agriculture
and Biology (Niab), the National Institute for Biotechnology
and Genetic Engineering (Nibge), Agricultural Universities and
Forest Department should work together as some of these
departments are already working on it and, we wait for domino
effects.
The forest departments should encourage plantation of
indigenous trees - Keekar, Phulla, Neem, Chahra. Recently
elected Nazims and those who want to empower people at the
grassroots level should also encourage plantation of
indigenous tree species and they might work in collaboration
with the non-governmental organizations working for
preservations of environment and development of ecology.
Courtesy: The DAWN
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