NEW DELHI, November 9: India plans to establish during the international conference on `Integrated Plant Disease Management for Sustainable Agriculture' that Karnal bunt is no longer present in domestic wheat. The five-day meet begins from November 10 in the capital. This will help the Indian wheat to be competitive in global market and its access to markets in Europe, Canada, the US and Mexico will be unhindered, said director, Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) RB Singh.

Singh told reporters that India will explain to the scientist delegates from the US, Canada, Mexico and Europe that the Karnal bunt no longer exists in Indian wheat. Attempts would also be made to convince the conference that in future if any plant disease was detected in any particular zone of the country, that zone should be declared as plant disease infected instead of declaring the whole country as plant disease infected, he added.

The international conference is being hosted jointly by IARI, Indian Phytopathological Society and Indian Council of Agricultural Research. Singh said that the integrated plant disease management alone can lead to reduced pesticide use, lessen health hazards and sustain agricultural productivity. The future demands for increased and sustainable agricultural output were also reflected in increased export opportunities due to domestic economic reforms and the new GATT agreement. The modest estimates put the losses due to biotic stresses, including post harvest losses, at about 40 per cent, Singh added. If half of this could be saved, there would be an increase of about 20 million tonne of foodgrains. India with 2.2 per cent global geographical area can support foodgrain needs for 15 per cent of world population. Dean and joint director (education) of IARI Anupam Varma said that the conference will also discuss the soil solarisation which has been successfully adopted in Israel. India also needed to adopt soil solarisation for identifying technologies for management of soil borne pathogens even on small farms, he said. There will be 19 symposia dealing with integrated management of plant diseases of various crops, diagnosis of plant diseases, characterisation of plant pathogens, bio-control of plant diseases, application of bio-technology for plant disease management, host pathogen interaction, global issues and environmental concerns. Apart from symposia, there would be group discussions on rice-wheat cropping systems, seed health certification, Karnal bunt of wheat, phytophathora diseases, rhizobacteria, sanitary and phytosanitary related issues and soil solarisation.

The recommendations of group discussions will be of special interest in context of globalisation of agriculture. Plenary lectures will also be delivered by world renowned scientists for identifying areas of research requiring attention in future and technologies requiring refinement for improvement of crop yields, the director Singh said.

The scientists who will deliver plenary lectures are, M S Swaminathan, R J Cook and Roger Beachy of the US, Adrian Gibbs of Australia, B D Harison and Roy Johnson of the UK, JC Zadoks of Netherlands, RB Singh, JP Varma and Anupam Varma fron IARI.

In the concluding session R S Paroda, secretary, DARE and director-general, ICAR, will speak on the main theme of the symposium. He will provide guidelines for the research scientists for follow-up in the coming years. More than 100 delegates from abroad and 500 delegates from India are participating in the conference. Scientists from 31 countries including the US, UK, Netherlands, Germany, France, Canada, Brazil, Italy, Australia, Nigeria, Kenya, Malaysia, Thailand, China and Japan will be presenting their papers.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.