Focus on farmers' battle to contain cotton virus

A silent battle being waged on agricultural lands in southern Punjab, famous for their high-quality cotton output, has just been forced into a higher gear after the re-emergence of a deadly virus that wrought havoc with cotton crops in the early nineties. Eastern Punjab produces about 80 percent of the crop for Pakistan and the virus could devastate the local economy. The Cotton Leaf Curl Virus (CLCV) first appeared in cotton fields in the eastern part of Punjab province in the 1992-93 season after the previous season had seen yields reach record highs with 12.8 million bales. The outbreak caused the cotton output to drop immediately, thereafter, decreasing to between 8-9 million bales over the next couple of seasons and hovered around that figure, not climbing even after researchers and scientists managed to defeat the virus by the mid-90s. However, the reprieve was short-lived. In the summer of 2003-04, farmers from across the cotton-growing belt in southern Punjab - where the district of Vehari alone produces the amount of cotton equivalent to the entire cotton crop produced by the southern Sindh province - reported the re-emergence of the leaf curl virus. Soon afterwards, laboratory tests revealed that it was a newer, more deadly strain of the virus. Since then the focus has shifted from trying to "design" new varieties of cotton to figuring out a method to defeat the virus, according to a senior scientist at the state-run Central Cotton Research Institute (CCRI) in Multan, a city in southern Punjab famous for its sufi traditions and majestic shrines. "We have been told by the authorities that our premier focus should be on trying to find a way to eliminate the CLCV", Shabab-ud-Din, a senior scientist at the CCRI, told IRIN in Multan. VIRUS OF MUTATING DESTRUCTION The new strain of the CLCV attacked the entire cotton growing belt in southern Punjab stretching from Multan to regions further south such as Vehari, Bahawalpur, Rahim Yar Khan, Dera Ghazi Khan and the Lodhran, Muzaffargarh and Layyah districts. What it achieved was disturbing. The new strain ignored the notable success local scientists had achieved half a decade earlier in producing an admittedly weaker, but CLCV-resistant variety of cotton, and set about obliterating all gains that had been made. "This strain has mutated because of the three previous CLCV strains. And this strain is very strong, much stronger. Even previous CLCV-resistant varieties of cotton are not resistant to this new kind of strain", Tariq Mahmood, a plant pathologist at the CCRI, told IRIN. After failing in previous attempts to create a breed of cotton resistant to the leaf curl virus, scientists were now toying with the possibility of cross-breeding the conventionally grown crop with a breed that has grown wild for centuries, Mahmood said. "We are trying to test wild varieties of cotton to see if they are resistant. There is no need to sow it. It just grows by itself. We're taking DNA from the wild variety and trying to cross it with conventionally grown cotton. But it's a difficult process - both have different chromosome numbers so when we try and cross them, the results differ each time", he explained. CASH CROP Cotton is the mainstay of Pakistan's agrarian economy and cotton exports accounted for roughly 60 percent of export earnings during an eight-year period stretching from 1990-98. In the 1999-2000 season, a yield of 11.5 million bales was second only to the record high of 12.8 million bales in 1991-92; the year before the rot caused by the leaf curl virus set in. But, acknowledging the problems caused by the new strain of the virus, the head of the country's central bank said in November that the crisis in the cotton sector would have some impact on the country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP), before adding that the overall performance of the agriculture sector had been satisfactory. The government's target for the financial year 2003-04 was 10.55 million bales, higher by about 450,000 bales from the previous year, as it banked on drought-hit farmers using a less water-intensive crop. Farmers in Sindh, which borders southern Punjab, were worse hit than their Punjabi counterparts in 2002-2003, but agriculture officials were hopeful that better water availability would help cotton production exceed government expectations this season. Also, water represents a significant problem for cotton crop production. Salinity in ground water presents an insurmountable hurdle for most cotton growers and, despite constant exhortations by the Pakistan Agricultural Research Council (PARC) that urge farmers to be objective about the way they use both ground water and canal water - which can sometimes be scarce - that understanding is yet to develop in the local farming populace. MINIMISE, NOT DEFEAT However, the prime objective of scientists engaged in a race against time is to produce an effective antidote to the leaf curl virus. "The virus is our main focus right now", Shabab-ud-Din, the CCRI scientist said. Agricultural scientists across the country were collaborating as they tested out new, sometimes genetically modified varieties of cotton against the virus, he explained. "The problem is that this virus mutates every time we try out a new kind of cotton breed. That means we have to keep on trying again and again until we manage to find a variety that can withstand the virus' infiltration," Shabab-ud-Din maintained. For Pakistan's cotton crop, which is grown on 12-14 million acres with an average production of about 210 kg/ha and 500 kg/ha of oil seed, the leaf curl virus, therefore, represents a serious threat to its growth in the world's fourth-largest producer. But men like Mahmood, the plant pathologist at the cotton institute in Multan, are still pragmatic enough to admit that there can be no immediate remedy to the problems caused by the virus. "We can only minimise the effects of the leaf curl virus at present. We can't hope to defeat it right now, so we're just looking at ways to minimise the damage it causes. Hopefully, we should be able to come up with a long-term solution thereafter," he stressed.