Plague ground

Amid the Covid-induced crisis, the multiple waves of attacks by desert locusts may put India’s food security at risk

- REKHA DIXIT

REMEMBER THE RAINS in March, which cleaned the air much before the lockdown did and kept summer at bay from the northern plains for weeks? Humans were not the only ones who enjoyed it. Far away in the sands of the Thar, for a species of locust called Schistocerca gregaria, the rains were a trigger to go into a frenzy of breeding.

By April, the desert sands were abuzz with the patter of millions of little feet. As the young hoppers rubbed their legs against each other, their bodies started producing serotonin—the same hormone, which in humans is known as the happiness or feel good hormone. The hormone converts solitary insects into gregarious ones, makes them indiscriminate feeders and strengthens their leg muscles for long distance flights in search of food. The swarms could become several kilometres long and as dense as 150 million/sqkm.

On April 11, the Locust Warning Office (LWO), a department in the agriculture ministry, saw the first incursions of these hoppers at the Indo-Pakistan border. The desert locust has three breeding areas—the Horn of Africa is its winter breeding ground (October-February); Balochistan and the Persian Gulf for spring breeding (February-July); the Thar desert in India and south west Pakistan is the summer nursery (July-October). “By February 17, we had no locust in India,” explains K.L. Gurjar, deputy director, locust division of agriculture ministry’s plant protection department, Faridabad.