Mystery ‘dwarfing’ disease hits rice in Punjab and Haryana

Rajinder Singh transplanted ‘PR-121’ and ‘PR-113’ paddy varieties on his 9-acre holding between June 22 and June 25. “In the first 30-35 days, there was uniform growth of all plants. But after that, some stopped while the others continued growing. About 40 per cent plants in my PR-113 fields (3.5 acres) haven’t grown at all after 35 days, with this at 70 per cent for the PR-121 variety (5.5 acres),” said this 26-year-old from Darsopur village in Punjab’s Pathankot district and tehsil.

Pritam Hanjra, a basmati paddy grower from Urlana Khurd village in Madlauda tehsil of Haryana’s Panipat district, claims that he detected the problem first in a fellow farmer’s 35-acre field on July 4. He, then, alerted scientists at the nearby Krishi Vigyan Kendra and also the Punjab Agricultural University (PAU), Ludhiana.

“That person had done direct seeding of Pusa Basmati-1509 on May 20. His field had up to 10 per cent dwarfed plants when I saw it on July 4. The same thing happened to the Pusa Basmati-6 variety that I transplanted on June 20, where 7-8 per cent of the plants had stopped growing by July-end,” he stated.

According to Hanjra, basmati paddy plants usually attain 70-75 cm height after 60 days of transplanting/direct sowing, while lower at 50-55 cm for non-basmati varieties: “The stunted plants in the infected fields have 33-60 per cent of what should be their normal height after one month”.

Significantly, scientists don’t have an answer to the mystery disease yet. “They initially attributed it to zinc deficiency. But if that was the cause, it would have affected all plants in the field having such deficiency. Here, stunting is limited only to some plants in the same field,” Hanjra pointed out.

Farmer Rajinder Singh holding a dwarf paddy plant at his field in Darsopur village of Pathankot in Punjab. (Express)

Rajinder Singh received a similar diagnosis of zinc deficiency from Punjab agriculture department officials: “They told me to spray 0.5 kg of zinc and 2.5 kg urea per acre after diluting with water. I did that and also applied plant growth regulators. But far from re-growing, the stunted plants have started turning pale. They cannot bear any baali (flower panicles) or daana (grain)”.

Gurvinder Singh, director of agriculture in the Punjab government, admitted that dwarfing of paddy has been reported from many districts, including Pathankot, Hoshiarpur, Nawanshahr, Ropar, Fatehgarh Sahib, Mohali, Patiala and parts of Ludhiana. Moreover, almost all varieties have been affected, with varying degrees of intensity.

“It is visible more in fields where paddy has been transplanted (in flooded conditions after raising in nurseries), as against directly seeded,” he added. Also, the percentage of stunted plants seems higher in non-basmati than in basmati paddy fields. Nirmal Singh, who farms 50 acres of joint-family land at Narmana village of Patiala district’s Nabha tehsil, has reported 25 per cent stunted plants in his Pusa-44 non-basmati fields and 10 per cent for Pusa Basmati-1509.

Meanwhile, a team of scientists from the Indian Agricultural Research Institute has visited farmers’ fields in Punjab and Haryana to study the severity of dwarfing and collect plant samples. “These have been sent for DNA sequencing and are being analysed for the presence of mycoplasma (bacteria having no cell wall), viruses or any other probable cause of the problem, including nutritional deficiency. We are awaiting the results,” A.K. Singh, director of the premier New Delhi-based institute who led the team, told The Indian Express.

PAU, too, has constituted a 10-member committee of scientists to find out what the unknown disease is. “They have collected field samples and are checking for any match with the available molecular markers of known diseases,” a top scientist at the varsity confirmed.

All this comes even as the total all-India area planted under rice during this kharif season was only 34.37 mh till August 18, down from 37.46 mh for the same period of last year. Given an average rice yield of 2.7 tonnes per hectare, it translates into almost 8.5 million tonnes of production decline. All eyes are now on Punjab and Haryana, where non-basmati yields average 4-4.5 tonnes per hectare. The impact, if any, of the mysterious “dwarfing” disease is not known as yet.