Cotton crop damaged in Bathinda villages

Bathinda Cotton crop over 200 acre in the district has been damaged with officials attributing the loss to use of saline water for irrigation and the sudden rain over the past few days. Teams from the state agriculture department and Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) arrived in the district to take stock of the situation on Friday. The total area under cotton in the district is 1 lakh hectares.

The teams took samples of water and soil from the affected fields that are spread across Bhai Bakhtaur, Mai Sar Khana, Malkana, Jodhpur Pakhar, Ram Garh, Bhunder, Burj Sema and Rama villages.

Harwinder Singh, a farmer of Rama, said, “There was damage to the cotton crop I had sown on two acre. I have ploughed the fields.” Another farmer Bhupinder Singh, president, BKU (Ekta – Ugrahgan) unit of Bhai Bakhtaur, said, “The crop of two acre has also been damaged. I am yet to decide whether to plough the fields or not. The damage has been done due to supply of saline water coupled with sudden rain during this hot weather.”

“Crop on around 200 acre has been damaged,” said Gurditta Singh, Bathinda chief agriculture officer.

Agriculture development officer Gurpreet Singh said, “Ground water samples that were used for irrigation purpose have shown a high Electrical Conductivity (EC) at 6,500 points. For agriculture, anything above 2,000 points is not considered fit.”

Gurditta added, “The damaged crop can be revived fully if Cobalt Chloride is sprayed within 24 hours of damage. In this too, 70 crops can be revived by the spary within 48 hours of damage.”