Case worm infected paddy leaves
Case Worm (Nymphula depunctalis known as Dhovem Pisollem in Konkani) pests appear in low-lying areas whenever heavy rainfall occurs during July-August. The case-worm larvae cut the leaf blades into short lengths, construct tubular cases, remain inside these small rolls and feed on the foliage. This pest is semi aquatic in habits and is able to breathe under water. In a badly infested field, a number of these leaf cases, white in colour could be seen attached to the plants. The case worm also appears in the Rabi season and causes severe damage.
The whitening of the grass blades in paddy is a typical sign of CASE WORM attack. The greenish caterpillar eats the leaf mesophyll that contains the green chrophyll pigment and hence it looks white. It rolls a small (about one inch long) beedi of the rice leaf and cuts it to fall and float on the water to pupate before emerging as the white moth that is known as “dhovem pisollem” in Konkani.
Solution
Important is the water regulation. If one can drain the water from the field and float a coir rope at the outlet, it will trap the pupae in the leaf beedi. Collect and crush on the road or any hard surface. Where the earhead (of rice) has not emerged, CUT the affected leaves with a sickle and destroy the caterpillars inside.
You can also use VIKARSHA ORGANIC REPELLANT (from Jafer Ali’s AgriHelp – 94466 38348| Email: agrihelp@rediffmail.com). It is ovicidal, (kills insect eggs) and a repellant. It works on lepidopterans (moths and Butterflies) and also reduces Plant Hoppers including Brown Plant Hopper (BPH) which is a problem in rice paddies.
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Case Worm – English (PDF)
Dhovem Pisollem – Roman Konkani (PDF)
The Energy & Resources Institute’s (TERI) Western Regional Center, under one of its projects supported by the Toyota Foundation (Japan), has helped the Chorao Farmers Club acquire a Mechanical Paddy Transplanter. With part funding through TERI’s project and part assistance from the Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojana (RKVY), the Chorao Farmers Club has purchased their first 8-Row Paddy Transplanter, from Goa Tractor and Tillers.
An Auspiscious Start: Director of Agriculture, Mr. Satish Tendulkar, breaks a coconut to an auspicious start
After experimenting with the transplanter last year, the Chorao Farmers Club decided to acquire this machine, which is also being used by six other farmers groups across the state. The Department of Agriculture is encouraging the transplanter in an attempt to modernise farming practices and provide farmers with an alternative to unreliable, often unavailable or expensive labour.
The Chorao Farmers Club, with assistance from the Department of Agriculture will transplant the Jyoti variety of red kernel rice in the villages of Chodan and Madel (5 ha each village) over the next 7-8 days.
The Farmers Club has resolved to avoid the use of chemical weedicides and pesticides as they believe these may be harmful in the long term and have been assisted by the Agriculture Department in identifying alternative methods of crop protection.
Says Gita Uskaikar from Chodan, who has recently been trained to raise the nursery as needed for the machine, “It is easy to raise this special nursery, but farmers must do it themselves on-site since it makes the process of transplantation easier. Now that our Club has its own machine, we will be able to systematically transplant paddy seedlings across the village”. The time saved while transplanting by using the machine is significant. The Club transplanted 1.5 ha (6000m2) in 5 hours, which would have otherwise taken four women, working together five days to complete.
Yogita Mehra from TERI adds, “There is much excitement among our farmers as they are keen to see the results and use the machine to revive the practice of winter paddy cropping in the village”.
Over the next year, the Chorao Farmers Club is also looking to acquire additional farm machinery that can help improve productivity and efficiency of their farming practices. This aspiration of the Club is going to continue to be supported financially by TERI and the Toyota Foundation, in addition to the support that will be provided for building entrepreneurial skills, providing training for new technologies and crops and innovative experiments in marketing and brand building.
In a joint program with the Department of Agriculture, the Chorao Farmers Club has transplanted over 7 Ha of paddy in Chodan and Madel villages using our newly acquired mechanical paddy transplanter.
This is the first large scale initiative using mechanical transplanting methods — and is being undertaken as a solution to labour unavailability and costs in several villages across Goa.
Mechanical paddy transplanter being used in Chodan village
In this project — managed by our own project managers Namita Khandeparkar (Madel) and Gita Uskaikar (Chodan) — the nursery was prepared centrally (by Gita Uskaikar and the Department of Agriculture) and then used in the transplanting activity for the fields of 28 participating farmers.
Our farmers felt that this was more convenient and affordable than their current model because of the unreliability of agricultural labour. These experiments shall continue in subsequent seasons so we can evaluate the impact and benefits of these methods over the long term.
Posted in Events on 20. Nov, 2009
Cyclone Phyan that struck the western coast of India caught several farmers unawares. November is no time to be expecting thunder storms! But the rains came and stayed for several days after that.
Harvested paddy that awaited threshing got innundated
Harvested paddy that was lying in the field awaiting threshing got caught in the downpour. Low-lying khazan areas were inundated for several hours and this led to rotting of the harvest
Inspecting losses and salvaging what can be salvaged
In some cases it was possible to salvage a part of the crop and let it dry
Sitting in water for several hours, the paddy has resprouted!
In many cases, the dampness and the heat resulted in the paddy sprouting seedlings again! This is of no use to the farmers. It can certainly not be eaten and replanting these is not possible for most, as there is a shortage of water in the later months when water is needed for the rice.
The picture below shows the paddy that was transplanted on the 20th of July using the Mechanical Paddy Transplanter.
Paddy, 49 days after mechanical transplantation
It’s been 49 days since transplantation and the paddy is doing well. In the picture on the right, the curved outline of the path taken by the paddy transplanter is visible.
The Chorao Farmers Club, will be testing the feasibility of mechanised paddy productionin order to evaluate the usefulness and cost effectiveness of an 8-row paddy transplanter on a test plot in Chorao island.
With support from The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) and NABARD and under the guidance of the Department of Agriculture and the Krishi Vigyan Kendra, the Chorao Farmers Club will be transplanting paddy seedling using a transplanter on Monday 20th July.
The members of the Chorao Farmers Club, who have a high dependence on rice cultivation, have been dogged by labour availability problems in recent years. The shortage in labour availability coupled with increasingly high labour costs have been contributing to the retardation of agriculture in the state. The use of the paddy transplanter is expected to significantly reduce the labour cost required (by upto 50%) during the transplanting of paddy seedlings from the nursery into the fields – which is one of the largest components of overall labour costs in the cultivation of paddy. The chart below shows this activity makes up about 31% of the total operative costs of paddy production when labour is hired. This also cuts down the time required for the transplanting process by over 90%.
Source: Chorao Farmers Club experiment for the paddy season in 2008
In order to use this transplanter the main change required by a farmer is in the plantation of the nursery. Thick mats of seedlings need to be developed in what is known as a ‘Dapog Nursery’. These can be compared with the ‘tiles’ of fine grass available for planting lawns. Specific sized seedling-tiles are fed into the transplanter, which can plant 8 rows in one go, and there is a predetermined distance at which clumps of 5-7 seedlings will be pulled out from the ‘tile’ and transplanted. Typically, this transplanter can cover 1 acre (approximately 4,000 sq.mts) in two hours.
