Rajasthan and a few other states are currently facing the worst locust attack since 1993.
Locust, one of the oldest migratory pests, are currently destroying the crops in the agricultural lands in different states of India.
What caused the latest outbreak?
“The current locust outbreak is the biggest in 25 years in Ethiopia and Somalia, 26 years in India, 70 years in Kenya,” Keith Cressman, locust forecasting officer at FAO told PTI.
“The outbreak started after heavy amounts of rains over east Africa and the Arabian Peninsula,” Roxy Mathew Koll, a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM) in Pune added.
Koll added that this is due to the storm activity sourced from Arabian Sea.
“Heavy rain triggers the growth of vegetation in arid areas where desert locusts can then grow and breed,” he said.
He also added that the climate change in recent times accentuated the phenomenon called Indian Ocean Dipole.
Also, the global warming plays a major role in all of these.
Cressman said the current locust invasion in India by an unprecedented number of swarms originated in southern Iran from their breeding in spring last year.
“Summer breeding along both sides of the Indo-Pakistan border was much higher than normal due to the swarm invasion and the monsoon rains lasting one month longer than normal, allowing up to three generations of breeding,” Cressman said.
Now, the Government is looking to destroy the pests using different methods to spray the pesticides and reported that 60% of them are already killed.
