The United Planters Association of Southern India (UPASI) said that the tea mosquito bug (Helopeltis theivora: TMB) is affecting tea production in both low and high elevation plantations.
Key points
- UPASI president said that the bug, which was earlier confined to low elevation areas, had spread to plantations in high elevation areas in the north and southern States.
- The tea mosquito bug used to be considered a wet weather pest, earlier restricted to plantations in low elevations. But now it is spreading rapidly to higher elevation plantations too.
- At the same time, tea growers are straddled with a limited choice of pesticides following restrictions imposed by the Tea Board after the formation of the Plant Protection Code (PPC) in 2014.
- The PPC excludes many pesticides from the approved list with a view to make Indian tea safer and free of harmful residue.
- Accordingly, only seven pesticides are approved for use in South India, and planters are unable to achieve effective control of the bug.
- Under the circumstances, planters have appealed to the government to allow the use of pesticides available in the Indian market approved by the Central Insecticide Board and Registration Committee in other crops in India and which are also approved for use by the European Union and have minimum residue levels for tea.
