LAHORE: The Punjab Agriculture Department is taking steps on a priority basis for digitalised data collection, surveillance and monitoring of crop pests by using modern technology to achieve set production targets of important crops.
Punjab Agriculture Task Force Additional Secretary Muhammad Shabbir Ahmed Khan said this here on Thursday while addressing the launching ceremony of application, developed in collaboration with the Asian Development Bank and Centre for Agriculture and Biosciences International (CABI) for the control, digitalization, monitoring and reporting of crop pests.
He said that in the pilot testing phase of this application, the surveillance and monitoring of pests on the cotton crop cultivated in 22 districts of Punjab had been undertaken, which yielded encouraging results and it helped in the control of harmful insects.
The operation and monitoring of this application was carried out by the team of the department of Pest Warning and Quality Control of Pesticides and advisory services were also taken through it, he added.
The Additional Secretary Agriculture said that this year monitoring of wheat, paddy and other important crops would also be carried out in order to increase per acre production of crops by controlling harmful insects.
Punjab Agriculture Pest Warning Director General Rana Faqir Ahmed said that this application would help in controlling pests of crops. Through this digitalized system, pest warning control teams could immediately report on the situation of pest attack on crops in any area, he added.
He said this application would be used for the surveillance, monitoring and control of harmful insects of 56 various crops. Representative of the Asian Development Bank, Noriko Sato said that use of ICT for the control of harmful insects was need of the hour and added that through this application, monitoring would be done through the collaboration of information and remote sensing technology, which would help in the coordinated control of harmful insects.