20000314

Injection

for fruit plant

diseases invented

LAHORE: The Renowned soil scientist Altaf Hussain claimed to have invented a new injection to prevent fruit plants from bacterial, fungal and viral attacks.

He told APP here on Monday that foreign exchange worth millions of dollars spent on the import of spray for this purpose will be saved. He said that treatment of human beings and animals with injections is a common practice all over the globe. The plants also suffer from diseases of which a majority are related to bacterial, fungal or viral infection, and the normal practice to control these has been to spray them with insecticides and fumicides.

He said viral diseases appear, complete their life cycle and disappear, and observed, "we, the land reclamation people, are deeply associated with plant performances, and know that in gardens fruit plants have their limitation and are unable to give their potential produce."

He said fruit worth millions of rupees falls prey to different sorts of diseases every year before it ripens properly, thus depriving growers of their investment. Secondly, the imported spray was beyond the reach of all farmers, and there was a dire need for evolving a cheaper indigenous treatment of the plants, he observed.

Altaf Hussain claimed that after a year long research, he had succeeded in developing a plant medicine which could be injected, and which he said would control the infection effectively.

He said the injection was tested several times on newly formed fruit in case of guava, citrus (kino), lemon, canker disease of citrus and pomegranate, scale disease of mango, damage by fruit fly to citrus, guava, mango and tomato fruit rot in fields, which yielded excellent results. He said preparation of an injection to control malformation of mango flowers is under way.

About the injection techniques, he said the medicine is put into a 200 to 250 mg bottle filled with water. A branch of the plant/tree is incised at the end and is thrust into the bottle which is hung with another branch close to it. The injection works and the effect is visible within two to three days, he remarked.

He said he carried out hundreds of experiments successfully at his private plant reclamation research unit at 36-B-1, Punjab Government Employees Housing Society, Lahore.ÑAPP