Imported plants not virus-free, claim farmers

Kuldeep Chauhan

Tribune News Service

Shimla, February 20

Apple growers today trashed the state government’s explanation that it was “importing plant material free from pest and diseases”. They said the Horticulture Department’s premature deal with a shady importing company through a commission agent was done to benefit a few people.

“We are not satisfied with the government’s explanation that the imported plant material is free from pest and diseases,” said Rakesh Singha, president, Himachal Seb Utpadak Sangh.

“The farmers are not trained in replanting the new plant material in old orchards,” he said.

Singha alleged that the deal was not done with a motive to promote apple farming in the state.

The farmers lamented that the department showed a tearing hurry in importing the plant material from Italy without getting proper feedback from the farmers in 2016-17. It did not prepare farmers for replanting the rootstock material in place of old orchards by treating the soil, Singha said, adding that the testing should have been done from the accredited government lab.

“The imported plant material do not belong to the virus-free EMLA series and Geneva rootstock,” he said.

The farmers demanded that the government should take steps to make the soil fit for cultivation. “The department has distributed over 50,000 plants to the farmers.

Singha said it was responsibility of the government’s agencies to first educate the farmers on how to treat the infected soil before replanting the rootstocks in orchards. “Without treating the soil the new planted varieties will not yield the desired results as plants are bound to get infected due to “replantation disease”, found common in old orchards in Himachal and other parts of the world,” the farmers said.