Insecticide with low toxicity launched

While addressing a press conference, R.G. Agarwal, Chairman-cum-Managing Director of Dhanuka group claimed that recent data from different agriculture universities indicated that Nukil would be effective on number of crops to control different insect pests, apart from its use in non-agriculture. It is also used to control BPH on rice, which is an emerging problem with most of the rice growers.

He maintained that the new insecticide has a very low toxicity to natural enemies and was harmless to honey bees. Another feature was that Nukil was stable under normal conditions and was almost unaffected by rain. He felt that such an insecticide which could remain unaffected by rains would help farmers most. Answering a question, he ruled out that suicide by farmers in Andhra Pradesh was due to pesticides. It was due to delayed monsoon and continuous rains.

While their total target for the first year is 1 lakh litres, target for Punjab for the 1st year is 10,000 litres. In order to impart the right use of technology to the farmer, the group will be appointing more than 100 agriculture graduates and post graduates in Punjab. The turnover of the group during 1997-98 was about Rs 105 crore and it has set a target of Rs 125 crore for 1998-99. Since they already have 450 distributors and 7,500 dealers throughout the country, marketing the product will not be a problem, he added.