Many tribal farmers from Pallamadu village in Khammam district of Andhra Pradesh, who have been planting eucalyptus trees for years,are a worried lot. A new gall pest that has attacked many eucalyptus saplings is stunting their growth in the village and in various parts of the country.
Rambabu, a farmer who has been cultivating eucalyptus trees in three acre out of 20 acre of his agricultural land for the last few years, is worried that new pest would spoil his earnings which has been in the range of Rs 1 lakh for four years. He supplies wood fibre to ITC’s paper mill located near by.
Agricultural scientists still grappling with the gall disease have said that if not curbed on time, the pest could hit 10-15% of the 2.5 lakh hectare of plantation over the next two years.
More than 1.5 lakh, mostly marginal and small farmers, have taken up eucalyptus plantations across the country for augmenting their income through supplying wood pulp to paper industry.
This is bad news for the pulp and paper industry, which is dependent on eucalyptus fibre and consumes more than 6.8 million tonne of wood annually.
Most of the wood requirement is sourced from the social forestry initiatives taken by various paper manufacturers with marginal farmers in mostly degraded land.
According to HD Kulkarni, general manager (plantation) of ITC ‘s paperboards & specialty papers division at Bhadrachalam said that insecticide sprays do not control the spread of gall insect, which originated from Australia.
The disease is caused by the gall wasp, an ant like insect that lays eggs in new branches or in the mid-ribs of the new leaves of eucalyptus trees causing growth known as galls.
“The disease was first noticed two years back in Puducherry and later found in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and other states,” Kulkarni told FE. He also said that electrical devise, fumigation, botanical pesticides (neem, pongamia oil) spray also did not help control the spread of gall insect.
However, scientists in Israel have found a biological method to control the gall wasps and has successfully mass reared parasitoids – wasps that kill the gall wasps preventing the spread of gall disease.
Recently, Indian Paper Manufacturers Association and Indian Council for Agricultural Research’s biological control wing and Bangalore-based Project Directorate of Biological Control (PDBC) have been collaborating to introduce new Israeli technology to combat the eucalyptus gall disease.
Kulkarni said that PDBC is in the process of importing the parasitoid wasps that kill the disease spreading insects.
The next two years is crucial to fighting the new disease, he said. Otherwise the paper industry needs to urge farmers to grow other plants such as Casurina, Subabul and Acadia if the disease continues to spread.