India’s Falling Cotton Production

Why in news?

The pink bollworm has taken a toll on the fibre crop, even as new “mating disruption” technologies to control the pest are showing promise.

What is Cotton?

• Cotton is one of the most important fiber and cash crop of India and plays a dominant role in the industrial and agricultural economy of the country.
• Origin - India is believed to be the home of cotton because the art of making cloth from cotton was first developed in India.
• Cultivated Species – There are four cultivated species of cotton viz.
  • Old World Cottons (or) Asiatic cottons - Gossypium arboreum,  G.herbaceum,
  • New World Cottons - G.hirsutum (American Upland cotton), G.barbadense (Egyptian cotton)
• G.hirsutum represents 94% of the hybrid cotton production in India and all the current Bt cotton hybrids are G. hirsutum.

India is the only country in the world where all the four cultivated species are grown on commercial scale.

• Climate & Soil- Cotton is a semi-xerophyte that is grown in tropical & sub tropical conditions.
• It is grown on a variety of soils ranging from well drained deep alluvial soils to black clayey soils.
• Cotton is a Kharif crop in the major parts of the country and also monsoon based in southern zone.

What is the significance of cotton?

Ginning is the process of separating the fibres from the seed. The raw un-ginned cotton harvested by farmers is called kapas which has the white fluffy fibre or lint (36%) and seed (62%).

• Cotton has a roughly two-thirds share in India’s total textile fibre consumption.
• It plays a major role in sustaining the livelihood of an estimated 6 million cotton farmers and 40-50 million people engaged in related activity such as cotton processing & trade.
• Cottonseed is the country’s 3^rd largest domestically-produced vegetable oil (after mustard and soyabean)
• Cotton seedcake, a protein-rich feed ingredient for livestock and poultry, is the 2^nd biggest feed cake/meal (after soyabean).
• Due to its economic importance in India, cotton is also termed as “White-Gold.                                         

What is the present issue with Cotton production?

• Between 2000-01 and 2013-14, India’s cotton production, in terms of lint, almost tripled from 140 lakh to 398 lakh bales of 170 kg each due to Bt technology.
• However, the Pectinophora gossypiella or pink bollworm (PBW) have developed resistance Bt toxins over time and to fall in yields.

• This is because PBW is a monophagous pest that feeds mainly on cotton unlike American bollworm that is polyphagous, with alternative hosts.
• The PBW population that became resistant from continuously feeding on Bt hybrids, therefore, gradually overtook and replaced the ones that were susceptible.
• The pest’s short life cycle (25-35 days) was conducive for it to complete at least 3-4 generations in a single crop season of 180-270 days, further accelerating the resistance breakdown process.

Bt cotton is the only GM crop that is allowed in India. Bt cotton has been genetically modified by the insertion of one or more genes from a common soil bacterium, Bacillus thuringiensis.

How to control the bollworm infestation?

• Spraying insecticides – Such as profenofos, chlorpyrifos, indoxacarb, and cypermethrin.
• Mating disruption – It involves deploying Gossyplure, a pheromone signalling chemical which attracts the male adult moths into lures and prevent from mating with females.
• The Central Insecticides Board & Registration Committee under the Agriculture Ministry has approved two mating disruption products.
  • PBKnot – It is a dispenser having a 20-cm hollow polyethylene pipe, into which Gossyplure is impregnated and gets released from over 90 days and reducing the scope for infestation.
  • SPLAT-PBW - A flowable emulsion formulation technology for delivering Gossyplure.

References

1. Indian Express| India’s falling Cotton production
2. NFSM | Cotton
3. Ministry of Textiles | Cotton