It is Recommended,chief agriculture officer Faridkot-Dr Amrik Singh.
Faridkot
The farmers are blindly using Paraquat, a non selective herbicide on Moong(Green Gram beans) crop to harvest it by machine harvester inFaridkot.
Paraquat has allegedly been banned in about 58 countries of the world due to various reasons, according to the information available on Wikipedia.
It is a non selective herbicide and is very widely used to kill all kinds of green grass to clear the fields easily.
“This salt is most widely used herbicide.It is quick acting and non selective,killing green plant tissues on contact.It is also toxic (lethal) to human beings and animals due to its redox activity which produces superoxide anions.It has been linked to the parkinson’s disease and is banned in 58 countries,” reads the wikipedia article on it.
Another US based journal, abc news has also published an article on it that the Paraquat has a link with parkinson's disease.
As the "Sathi ''Moong crop does not mature uniformly and plucking the Moong beans is a very difficult task for the farmers, they choose the easy way.
When the Moong crop has some or most of the pods matured, they spray the herbicide which quickly leads to the dryness of the plants clarning the way for harvesting it by combine harvester.
It takes some days for its complete dryness.
But the residual effect on the produce is not known.
The salt quickly leads to the dryness of the plants,it also damages the Moong grains which are not fully matured by its spray.They shrivel and shrink.
But what is the effect on the produce which is sold in the market, needs to be studied.
As the Moong is usually widely used in the country as a major pulse and if the Paraquat has some residual effect in it, then it is of course a health hazard.
The Paraquat is so lethal to the human and animals that even a very small amount of it can lead to the death of the subject as it has no antidote.
In fact, the cultivation of Moong after Wheat and beeforree the paddy crop is not suitable as it leaves little time for its maturity.
It is sown in wheat fields in May and farmers want to harvest it before Mid July as they want to transplant paddy variety PR 126 or some Basmati varieties after it.
Though it called”sathi”(60 days duration) , it takes many more days because of the quality of soil and weather conditions.
It is mostly suitable for potato-Moong-paddy or Mustard(or some other vegetables)-Moong-paddy crop circle.
Recommended,chief agriculture officer Faridkot
When contacted, chief agriculture officer Faridkot,Dr Amrk Singh said that use of the Paraquat on Moog has been recommended by the university."When the crop is about 80 per cent,the farmers can spray it with 500 ML of paraquat,' he said.
He said that the spray evaporates and there is no bad effect on the hard and matured grains.
But the question is whether the farmers use only 500 ML per acre of more that 1 litre is to be seen.
Usually, the overdosages, which are common in Punjab, have some residual effect on the crops.