1500-1600 kanals suffer 30 percent damage due rice blast fungus in Kupwara: Officials

Srinagar, Oct 13: Owing to the low paddy yield this year, farmers in different areas in Kashmir are worried as many families earn their livelihood from the produce.

Farmers from different areas of Kashmir while talking with the news agency—Kashmir News Observer (KNO) said that this year the yield is very low as compared to the last few years as the produce was full of diseases.

Mohammad Maqbool, a farmer from Tangdhar said that the red rice for which the area is known suffered damage due to paddy blast.

“At time of threshing, we are witnessing very low yield this year due to which farmers are very much worried as thousands of families depend directly on paddy,” he said.

Subzar Ahmad, another farmer from South Kashmir said that due to unavailability of irrigation facilities in peak paddy sapling plantation season and later due to climate change besides continuous cloudy weather, the yield was just half of whatever farmers fetched in last year.

Subzar said that blasts and brown spot diseases were prevalent for the last few years but this year climate change played its role mostly.

Farmers from other areas also expressed the same concern following the low produce of crops this year.

Experts believe that climate change is the main reason for the low crop production this year.

Meanwhile, officials said that despite dozens of awareness camps, farmers are still sticking to old traditional varieties.

“Farmers must change varieties after every five to seven years but it isn’t happening on ground,” they said.

A top official of the agricultural department told KNO that around 1500-1600 Kanals of land suffered around 30 percent damage due to the rice blast fungus in Kupwara district alone.

He said that varieties which were distributed by government have shown positive results, however the traditional varieties are prone to diseases and other things and farmers must avoid it.