Jalandhar: Water-guzzling spring maize worries agriculture experts

Aakanksha N Bhardwaj

Jalandhar, March 17

There is a huge rise in the area under the water-guzzling spring maize and it has become a cause of worry for agriculture experts.

In Jalandhar district, 9,000 hectares were under the crop in 2020-21, which increased to around 25,000 hectares last year. This year, the crop has been sown on 17,000 hectares so far. Agriculture Department officials are expecting that the area under the crop would exceed last year’s number.

The situation is similar in Kapurthala too. Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann, who inaugurated a building of the PAU Agriculture College, said the government wanted people to adopt other crops and come out of the paddy crop as it was depleting underground water. Reason: Better yield per acre and good price.

As per information, per acres gives about 40 quintals of the produce. Because of high water consumption, the Agriculture Department and the Punjab Agricultural University do not recommend sowing of this crop.

Several farmers, who were earlier growing muskmelon in the Shahkot area of Jalandhar and the Dona area of Kapurthala, have now switched over to growing spring maize in their fields and have reduced the area under muskmelon.

While earlier talking to The Tribune, Amar Singh, a farmer from Shahkot, said he had reduced the area under muskmelon to less than 10 acres from 50 acres because of a dip in the profit in the past several years.

Dr Surinder Sandhu, Principal Maize Breeder at Punjab Agricultural University (PAU), said even this year the situation was same. “The practice of sowing maize after wheat is devastating because every third day, farmers are watering their fields. This will create havoc just like paddy. Strangely, farmers from the districts that come under the dark zone are also following the same practice,” she had earlier said.