Farmers in UP, Haryana, Punjab concerned over ground frost

NEW DELHI: Ravinder Singh, a farmer in Agra district’s Hasanpur village, is giving extra care to his potato crop planted on 20 acres. With minimum temperature around 4-5 degree Celsius, he is watching for any traces of ground frost or late blight virus hitting his crop.

“I have just released water in the fields to protect plants from the thin layer of snow created on the leaves due to ground frost. If the temperature further falls, we will create smoke in the periphery of farms by burning farm waste,” said Singh, who is expecting to harvest his crop in a month’s time.

Like Singh, farmers across north Indian states of Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Rajasthan are concerned about frost as temperature drops. According to the met department, the lowest temperature recorded on Friday morning in the plains of the country was 1.3°C at Pilani in Rajasthan. Frost can affect potato, tomato, mustard and amla.