Newer pests and diseases hit vegetable crops

Newer plant viruses resistant to most pesticides are one the reasons for the rising prices of daily essentials like tomatoes, ginger and tur dal.

While tomato growers have been struggling to control new viruses for about a decade now, production of ginger, capsicum, chillies, papaya and this year tur dal have also been affected due to newer pests and diseases, farmers and experts said.

“When tomato prices crashed, farmers reduced spraying on the crops to cut losses. This led to increased pests,” said Ajay Belhekar, a tomato grower from Pune district.


In high input cost crops like tomatoes and capsicum, farmers shift to other crops when they incur losses due to price crash or plant diseases. The prices of hybrid tomato seeds of big companies are upwards of Rs 70,000/kg.
Fed up with the losses caused by high expenditure on controlling pests, 63-year-old Gorakh Chavhan from Mohol taluka has stopped growing capsicum.

“We need to get stronger seeds for vegetable crops,” said Chavhan said. “The production cost is high as the seeds and pesticides are expensive. Vegetable crops need more labour, while the prices can fall anytime, causing huge losses.”

Fruit and vegetable growers have recently requested the central agricultural secretary to tighten the regulations on seed companies to ensure that they frequently update their seed varieties to make them resistant to the newer diseases and deliver on the claims they make about the seeds.

Seed companies agree that new viral diseases have become a menace.

“Last year, tur/arhar was affected badly by a viral disease,” said MG Shembekar, managing director of Ankur Seeds. “Crops like tomatoes, chillies, ginger, etc. are more affected. The climate is changing.”

He said high temperatures, and low or unseasonal rainfall are causing newer diseases. “Earlier, we used to change varieties after 8-10years. Now we are changing them after 3-5years,” Shembekar said.

Sopan Kanchan, president of Confederation of Indian Horticulture Associations, claimed there has been no communication from the government to horticulture farmers for the past several years. “We are facing new problems, which need new technologies, new varieties, new chemical molecules,” he said.

“Crops like capsicum, tomatoes, watermelon and papaya are getting such diseases which are not controlled by any pesticides. They can reduce the production by more than 50%,” Kanchan said.