<strong>China: Southwestern City Launches Project of Controlling Pests on Tobacco</strong>

Source from:  TobaccoChina Online 11/26/2013

Southwest China's Chongqing City has recently launched a five-year major exclusive project of comprehensive control over pests on tobacco crops in the city, which will be executed in a number of stages up to the year 2018, and which is expected to have a total investment of around 12 million yuan (1.96 million U.S. dollars).

It was reported that the project is intended to promote sustainable development of leaf tobacco production in the whole of Chongqing City, spend the next three to five years comprehensively establishing systems of healthy growing of leaf tobacco in hilly areas, ecological prevention and control and lean plant protection in Chongqing, effectively lower the extent of harm by pests and plant diseases, reduce application of pesticides, and remarkably increase the value of ecological leaf tobacco grown in hilly areas in Chongqing.

The project comprises six subjects, with 20 sublevel subjects of 61 research contents. The execution of the project is presided over by Chongqing City Tobacco Science Research Institute and Southwest University, with the participation of Qingzhou Tobacco Research Institute of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Southwest Agriculture and Forestry University, Chongqing University, Guizhou Tobacco Sciences Research Institute and other institutions.

Wang Fenglong, director of the Board of Experts for the project, and director and researcher of Qingzhou Tobacco Research Institute of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, said that presently, the losses caused by pests and plant diseases to tobacco crops in Chongqing City amount to around 15 percent, and that through the execution of the project, the losses are expected to drop to not more than 8 percent by the year 2018. Enditem