Staff Reporter
Islamaba
NLCC teams are working in a coordinated way for anti locust operations. This was said by Federal Minister for National Food Security and Research (NFSR),Syed Fakhar Imam while chairing meeting of NLCC on Friday. Lieutenant General Moazzam Ejaz, Coordinator NLCC co chaired NLCC meeting.
Till now 53184900 Hectares (HA) have been surveyed and 1121953 HA have been treated. In South-West Asia, good progress is being made against the first generation of hopper groups and bands that have formed mainly in Rajasthan, India and to a lesser degree in Tharparkar district in southern Sindh, Pakistan.
This is the result of more than 1072 teams, 765 vehicles and nearly 5847 staff involved in the ground control campaign in Pakistan. Keith Cressman, Senior Locust Forecasting Officer, FAO briefed about locust based range of issues including the genesis of the problem, the damage that can be caused and the climate change connection.
He mentioned that number of new technologies have emerged with potential applications to locust early warning and plague prevention. FAO has made a considerable effort to develop and test those technologies that showed the most promise with the affected countries. The integration and sustaining of these new technologies in national locust programmes represents a greater challenge than their initial identification and development.
A considerable amount of training, retraining and continual support is required before a new technology is successfully adopted and effectively used on a regular basis. These new technologies can be integrated into national and international programmes and that are used on a daily basis.
While all of these technologies have contributed to better early warning and reaction by affected countries and FAO, eLocust3, drones and satellite-based estimates and GIS have probably had the greatest impact on monitoring locust populations in Africa and Asia. He also discussed locust control campaign of Pakistan.
