The government asked the farmers in last season’s fungal-affected eight south and southwestern districts not to cultivate wheat for sometime to prevent the recurrence of ‘wheat blast’ caused by fungal contagion. Government advised farmers of these districts as the blast affected over one lakh hectares of wheat fields that caused up to 40 percent of crop damage in the last season.
Now, question rises why cultivators of these districts planted the wheat plants this season despite governmental advice otherwise. If they had paid heed to the advice they could avoid the situation. It has appeared in an explosive form in these areas now and it is advisable that the department concerned should check out what caused the cultivators to plant wheat in these areas.
As per reports, the first ever attack of wheat blast in Bangladesh cost the country a financial loss of at least Tk 1,800 crore in terms of lost yields last year. The blast affected over one lakh hectares of wheat fields in the eight south and southwestern districts such as Jessore, Kushtia, Chuadanga should have worked as a warning. But it was ignored.
Caused by a fungus — Magnaporthe oryzae — wheat blast is one of the most fearsome and intractable wheat diseases that directly strikes the ears of wheat and can shrivel and deform the grain in less than a week from the first symptoms appear, leaving farmers no time to act, which is very worrying. What is more frightening is that the blast fungus normally infects rice, wheat and over 50 types of grasses.
In this context, cautious scientific research is a must to save our crops from fungus infectivity. Bangladesh has to import as high as 40 lakh MT of wheat from the international market to meet growing domestic demand. The blast attack reemerged at a time when wheat production in Bangladesh had just started picking up to 13 lakh MT in two previous years after a long stagnation of harvest to 8 to 9 lakh MT for the past one decade.
The Agricultural Department cannot skip responsibility for failing to control wheat blast in country. Many fear that the wheat we import may contain fungal diseases when the seeds authorities of the country don’t use ‘disease detective instrument’ to check the seeds. In our view, seed screening is very important and why it is not being done by the authorities concerned is the biggest question.
