Grasshoppers seen in Tamil Nadu, not locusts, says agriculture department

KRISHNAGIRI: The agriculture department and Krishi Vigyan Kendra have clarified that the insects spotted in Neralagiri village in Krishnagiri as well as two villages in Kanyakumari district were grasshoppers and not the locusts ravaging crops in some northern states.

Thousands of insects had swarmed Neralagiri since Friday evening.

The matter was brought to the attention of Veppanahalli MLA P Murugan. On Saturday morning, agriculture department officials and KVK insect researchers in Piyur visited the village along with district collector S Prabhakar collector.

On closer inspection, they confirmed that the insects were not schistocerca gregaria, which is commonly known as desert locust. “Grasshoppers are usually found in calotropis gigantea and cactus plants especially when it rains during summer,” said S Rajasekar, joint director of Krishnagiri district agriculture department. He said farmers need not panic as they do not ravage standing crops.

State agriculture secretary Gagandeep Singh said it was not possible for locusts from the North to enter southern states. The officials advised the farmers to spray neem oil with water to control the grasshopper.

In Kanyakumari, farmers of Mulavilai and Vettukuli villages in Thiruvattar taluk saw thousands of big grasshoppers preying on banana, rubber and other leaves and also covering bushes and plants in the two villages. They measured two to three inches, had stripes of dark green and pale yellow.

“As a group of 50 to 100 grasshoppers on a banana plant, they destroyed a sizeable portion in less than an hour,” said Padmanabhapuram MLA T Mano Thangaraj who visited the place.

District collector Prashant M Wadnere sent a team to the spot with scientists from the KVK and officials of agriculture and horticulture departments. Tamil Nadu Agricultural University in Coimbatore later confirmed that it is a species known as spotted or ‘coffee grasshopper’ (Aularches milliaris) that affects coffee plantations.

KVK scientist and programme coordinator K Thirukumaran said that ‘coffee grasshopper’ is easily controllable by spraying Malathion 50 EC pesticide by mixing 2 ml in 1,000 ml water.

( Inputs taken from Kanyakumari and Chennai)