By KENNEDY MUPESENI –
THE country should embrace the use of bio-pesticides in eradicating uncompromising crop disease and pests to maintain the environment, a graduating Copperbelt University (CBU) environmental engineer has said.
Crop pests like tuta absoluta and army worms are threatening crop production year-in-year-out with Government and other stakeholders deploying conventional ways of stopping the stubborn pest such as fumigating crop fields.
But Nicholus Sande in a presentation dubbed extraction of a bio-pesticide, during the Engineering Institution of Zambia (EIZ) Paperate
Competition in Kitwe recently said there was need to deploy bio-pesticides to reduce environmental effects.
“I have been piloting the project of extracting bio-pesticides from tobacco which has proved to be successful. As a country we have depended on chemicals to fight crop pests and diseases which is proving costly and affecting the environment at the same time,” Mr Sande said.
He recommends that future investigation on the tobacco extract should be carried out to examine the effects of the optimal dilution ration to earthworms and other microorganism of the soil ecosystem.
