BATHINDA: With farmers increasingly sowing the high-yielding, disease-resistant Bollgard (Bt) cotton, land under Bt variety cultivation in Punjab is expected to jump to 18-20 per cent from the current 6-7 per cent of the total area under cotton cultivation.

"Now, the Punjab farmers have started seeing the advantages of sowing Bt cotton against conventional cotton. Therefore, majority of the farmers are expected to grow Bt cotton thereby increasing the land under Bt cotton cultivation to 18-20 per cent next year," said Joginder Singh, renowned cotton expert and ex-head of the department of Entomology, Punjab Agricultural University.

In Punjab, the total land under cotton cultivation is 5.8 lakh hectares. Of this, just 6-7 per cent of the area is occupied by Bt cotton.

A visit to the several fields in Bathinda district, which is also known as cotton belt, has shown that sowing of Bt cotton has led to an increase of roughly 40 per cent in the cotton yield, besides saving farmers the cost of pesticides and insecticides considerably.

"Earlier, I used to get a cotton yield of 7 quintals per acre with conventional seeds but with the sowing of Bt cotton, the yield has jumped to 10 quintals per acre. Moreover, I used to spend Rs 4,500 per acre on pesticides and insecticides for saving the crop from pests. But with Bt cotton I have saved this money also," said Raghbir Singh, a cotton grower at Gatwali village.