Agri scientist pens book on depleting green cover

GS Paul

Tribune News Service

Amritsar, December 12

To save the depleting green belt, a scientist of the Agriculture Department has come up with a book wherein he has put in his research to explore the reasons, which led to the destruction of trees.
Dr Inderjit Singh Dhanju, an official of the Agriculture Department, has highlighted two important and popular species of trees in Punjab — Sheesham and Kikkar — which have immense medicinal values. He intends to share his scientific research free of cost with universities, colleges and schools.
Titled as “Vanishing of Sheesham (tahil) and Kikkar ( babool)”, this book can be utilised as a reference handbook for teachers while giving lessons to students on the subject.
“My idea is to share my knowledge with students. Teachers can utilise it as a handbook while giving lessons on the subject. I am offering my research free of cost to students,” he said while showing his gratitude to Dr MS Sandhu, director, agriculture, and former director, agriculture, BS Sidhu, special adviser to the Agriculture Department.
Unconvinced with some of the scientific justifications about depletion of these trees, Dr Dhanju in his well researched book on which he spent two decades has emphasised that termite was the only reason for such a large scale damage of these trees.
He said, “The reasons I came across were generally like global warming, water table depletion or some fusasium fungus as the cause for the waning of Kikkar and Sheesham, but that was not the case. I found that it was the termite that was solely responsible for the vanishing of these species. Termite is also targeting common agricultural crops like paddy, sugarcane etc,” he said.
He said his research led him to a termite identified as ‘isoptera’. “It is 10 cm long pest having a life span of 15 years,” he added.
Dr Dhanju said besides this, there were many other species, which had termicidal properties. Similarly, there were word-destroying insects, popularly known as carpenter ants and several powder post beetles, which damaged wood and other building materials in many ways.
“A well-developed colony of termite contains queen, workers, soldiers etc. Termite’s major food is cellulose, which is present in the wood. So, termite attacks on the underground portion of the plant or tree and disturbs their cambium system. Cambium (xylem and phloem) is the life line of plant. Xylem carries water and nutrients whereas pholeum translocates food from leaves to other parts of plant, he added.
“For its control, pesticides like chlorophyriophos measuring 5 ml in 1 litre of water, amidachloprid 3 ml in one litre of water is required for soil application. For timber and wood, 50 ml of chloropyriophos is to be diluted with one litre of kerosene oil for wood structure. The pesticide dilution should be applied to the target side,” says Dr Inderjit Dhanju.