Bangalore, May 1, 2014: With a projected population of 1.3 billion in 2020, India has to produce 225 million tonnes of vegetables, 40 percent higher than 160 million tonnes in 2013. Therefore, it is crucial to maximize yields by protecting crops from insect related damages and to raise the nutritional value of food. Karnataka farmers, who contribute handsomely to the food and fruits baskets of India and yet are challenged by a variety of insects and diseases, have some good news finally.

DuPont India has announced the Karnataka launch of a new generation insect control, DuPont™ Benevia® to help state’s farmers establish their young crops for healthy growth and good harvests. Benevia® is designed and optimized for foliar applications in fruit and vegetable crops to protect from sucking and chewing pests that lead to enormous crop losses to farmers in the state. DuPont™ Benevia® effectively reduces the biotic stresses through its rapid anti-feeding activity on pests & control of insect vectors that transmit plant viruses. This leads to enhanced produce quality and helps the crop to reach its full yield potential.

DuPont™ Benevia® is unique because it controls both sucking and lepidopteran insects. It is powered by Cyazypyr®, the next generation diamide active ingredient from DuPont™ that has seen worldwide appreciation for excellent performance in countries such as China, Malaysia, Korea, Vietnam, New Zealand, Argentina and the USA. In India it is targeted to benefit fruit and vegetable growers in the southern and Western belts including Karnataka. This product is primarily designed for innovative farmers who desire better output and improved lives by adopting the latest technologies to grow crops.

“Our passion is to help farmers realize possibilities. The impossible becomes possible only when a powerful tool like DuPont™ Benevia® is used as per label directions. Farmers can then realize abundant crops that become breaking news,” said Ram Mudholkar, Director - DuPont Crop Protection, South Asia.  He stressed that maximum benefits are best experienced when DuPont™ Benevia® is used efficiently at early crop stage with back-to-back two foliar applications at a 10-days interval.

Sucking insect pests cause great damage to crops by feeding and drawing juices from plant tissues. Heavily infested plants become yellow, wilted, deformed or stunted, and may eventually die. Some sucking insects inject toxic materials into the plant while feeding, and some transmit viral diseases.. DuPont™ Benevia® insect control, when applied at an early crop stage, quickly stops feeding damage from sucking insects and greatly reduces plant stress to achieve a stronger crop establishment. Therefore, farmers can realize more opportunities to experience astonishing crop abundance.

DuPont Crop Protection business works together with partners to help realize the potential of the land and the untapped potential of farmers. It provides farmers worldwide with a wide range of technologies to improve sustainable agriculture. DuPont Crop Protection in India is committed to bring world-class latest technology and safer products for the farmers.  

Scientists and biotechnology companies are developing what could become the next powerful weapon in the war on pests — one that harnesses a Nobel Prize-winning discovery to kill insects and pathogens by disabling their genes.

By zeroing in on a genetic sequence unique to one species, the technique has the potential to kill a pest without harming beneficial insects. That would be a big advance over chemical pesticides.

“If you use a neuro-poison, it kills everything,” said Subba Reddy Palli, an entomologist at the University of Kentucky who is researching the technology, which is called RNA interference. “But this one is very target-specific.”

But some specialists fear that releasing gene-silencing agents into fields could harm beneficial insects, especially among organisms that have a common genetic makeup, and possibly even human health. The controversy echoes the larger debate over genetic modification of crops that has been raging for years. The Environmental Protection Agency, which regulates pesticides, will hold a meeting of scientific advisers on Tuesday to discuss the potential risks of RNA interference.

To attempt to use this technology at this current stage of understanding would be more naïve than our use of DDT in the 1950s,” the National Honey Bee Advisory Board said in comments submitted to the E.P.A. before the meeting, at the agency’s conference center in Arlington, Va.

RNA interference is of interest to beekeepers because one possible use, under development by Monsanto, is to kill a mite that is believed to be at least partly responsible for the mass die-offs of honeybees in recent years.

Monsanto has applied for regulatory approval of corn that is genetically engineered to use RNAi, as the approach is called for short, to kill the western corn rootworm, one of the costliest of agricultural pests. In another project it is trying to develop a spray that would restore the ability of its Roundup herbicide to kill weeds that have grown impervious to it.

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Monsanto is also exploring the use of RNA interference to kill a rootworm that damages corn. Michael E. Gray/University of Illinois

Some bee specialists submitted comments saying they would welcome attempts to use RNAi to save honeybees. Groups representing corn, soybean and cotton farmers also support the technology.

“Commercial RNAi technology brings U.S. agriculture into an entirely new generation of tools holding great promise,” the National Corn Growers Association said.Corn growers need a new tool. For a decade they have been combating the rootworm by planting so-called BT crops, which are genetically engineered to produce a toxin that kills the insects when they eat the crop.

Or at least the toxin is supposed to kill them. But rootworms are now evolving resistance to at least one BT toxin.RNA interference is a natural phenomenon that is set off by double-stranded RNA.

DNA, which is what genes are made of, is usually double stranded, the famous double helix. But RNA, which is a messenger in cells, usually consists of a single strand of chemical units representing the letters of the genetic code. So when a cell senses a double-stranded RNA, it acts as if it has encountered a virus. It activates a mechanism that silences any gene with a sequence corresponding to that in the double-stranded RNA.Scientists quickly learned that they could deactivate virtually any gene by synthesizing a snippet of double-stranded RNA with a matching sequence.

Ministry of Agriculture facilitates Public Private Partnership (PPP) projects in agriculture and allied sectors throughout the country. Private entrepreneurs can propose integrated agricultural development projects and take responsibility for developing all interventions through a single window. They have complete flexibility in designing suitable projects and submit proposals to State Governments for approval. 

Brinjal, a commonly used vegetable, accounts for the highest use of insecticides among all the vegetables in the country. This is mainly because farmers have no option but to spray insecticides on a weekly basis 15 to 20 times in the six months of the crop life to save the yield as brinjal is highly susceptible to the “shoot and fruit borer” (leucinodes orbonalis) attack. This pest causes 30 to 100 per cent crop loss. To end this problem, which is not only affecting human health and environment but also causing a huge drain on the farmers’ revenues in terms of crop losses and high costs of insecticides, the Indian Institute of Horticultural Research (IIHR) has come out with a method of biological control of the pest.

Under this system, an insect parasite Trichogramma chilonis that predates on this deadly pest is mass produced and released into the brinjal fields in a systematic manner at regular intervals.This method, which is not only eco-friendly but also cheaper and more effective than insecticides, has turned out to be a boon for farmers as it provides protection to the crop from the “shoot and fruit borer” pest without the use of insecticides, notes IIHR Director Amrik Singh Sidhu. According to him, it can result in savings of crores of rupees if a large number of brinjal farmers in the country opt for this method.

The biological method is so simple that it will be possible for any farmer to use it easily.“We will give farmers a small paper card that will have 250 to 400 eggs of the predator parasite appearing like dots. All that the farmers will have to do is to tie them either to the plants or small poles in the field located at a distance of about 10 ft. The predator parasites get released from this and start preying on the pest,” says A. Krishnamoorthy, Principal Scientist and head of IIHR’s division of Entomology and Nematology, who headed the efforts to develop and test this biological method involving fellow entomologist Ganga Vishalakshi.

In all, it would require 10 to 15 lakh parasites over six months to handle the pests in one hectare of land in addition to two sprays of Bt, he points out. “A farmer will be able to save a minimum of Rs. 25,000 per hectare through biological method as the weekly cost of this method will be only Rs. 150 to 200 as against Rs. 1,500 to 2,000 of each weekly insecticide spray, including labour charge. The total savings would touch a minimum of Rs. 1 lakh a hectare coupled with an increase in crop yield,” he says.

This technology, which was developed in 1985, was introduced in the fields around the IIHR campus located in Hesaraghatta in 2008 after testing for efficiency and environmental impact in different locations of the country. However, efforts are now being made to popularise this in the interest of protecting environment and increasing revenues of farmers with financial assistance from NABARD and the Department of Biotechnology, which have pumped in Rs. 8 lakh each, he said.