LAHORE: The Punjab Agriculture Department on Thursday launched the “Digitalized Pest Surveillance and Reporting System” which was developed in collaboration with the Asian Development Bank and Centre for Agriculture and Biosciences International (CABI).
The application is aimed at controlling, digitization, monitoring and reporting of crop pests.
Speaking on this occasion, Additional Secretary Agriculture (Task Force) Punjab Muhammad Shabbir Ahmed Khan termed the application as a game changer.
He said the provincial government was working on priority basis for digitalized data collection, surveillance and monitoring of crop pests by using modern technology to ensure the achievement of production targets of important crops.
He further 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 had 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 on board.
The Additional Secretary Agriculture further said that keeping in view the results of this application this year, monitoring of wheat, paddy and other important crops would also be carried out in order to increase per acre production of crops.
Director General Agriculture Pest Warning, Punjab Rana Faqir Ahmed said that this application would help in the control of 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. This application would be used for the surveillance, monitoring and control of harmful insects of 56 various crops so that the production of crops could increase.
Speaking at the ceremony, the Representative of the Asian Development Bank, Noriko Sato, said that use of ICT for the control of harmful insects was need of the hour.
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.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023