Secretary Higher Education Department Punjab Zulfiqar Ahmad Ghuman on Friday said that agriculture scientists should come up with the viable solutions to fight locust attack that is playing a havoc with the food security of the country.

He visited the University of Agriculture Faisalabad and called on UAF Vice Chancellor Dr Muhammad Ashraf, Commissioner Faisalabad Ishrat Ali, and agricultural experts of Entomology Department including Dr Jalal Arif, Dr Waseem Akram, Dr Amir Rasul, Dr Sagheer and others attended the meeting. He said that locust has emerged the one of the largest threat for the agriculture sector. He said that being an agrarian country, we have to pace up our efforts to fight the such challenges and increase per acre productivity. He also said that scientists from life science across the country should make the collaborated efforts on vector management to fight the vector borne diseases including dengue,. Dr Muhammad Ashraf said locust has emerged the second largest threat for the country after Covid 19. He said according to the FAO, as many as 38 per cent of the total agricultural area in Pakistan has become the breeding grounds for the desert locust. He said that the government has set up a consortium of the agricultural universities, Food Security Ministry, Agriculture Department NDMA, and PDMA others to work jointly on the locust. He said that UAF had designed a new sprayer for locust that can spell the spray-solution up to 50 feet high. He said that UAF has recently set-up a full-fledged research related to locust control centre. He suggested a mechanism should be evolved at provincial level for identifying the research thesis topic to avoid overlapping. Commissioner Ishrat Ali said that university should provide a training to use digital resources in order to make our research work at par with international standards. He said that we have to conduct the problem solving research for the industry.