Hungry snails alarm famine bell in Mizoram

Aizawl, Jan 7 (UNI) After rats, gaint snails have become rampant in the vegetable and paddy fields in Southern Mizoram, which posed threat of severe crop loss to hundreds of marginal farmers of the state.

With the report of snail attack in winter, the administration ordered to kill the snails and clean up the villages.

Plant protection experts and a number of NGOs have been working in snail-ravaged areas for past a month to prevent further crop loss, agriculture officials said.

They said the crustaceans, having shells resembling periwinkle - a plant with flat five petal flowers-are alien to the state and have come from Myanmar.

Talking to UNI, Assistant Plant Protection Officer of Agriculture Department James Lalsiamliana said the snails has already damaged about 13 crop fields in Saiha district along Mizoram-Myanmar border.

''We are taking the matter seriously and have sent a three-member expert team to the affected areas for conducting field study,'' said Mr Lalsiamliana .

According to state animal husbandry department, snails are habituated to breed in fresh water and they are multiplying as fast as rat.

Mizos consider it's a year of bad omen for the state - a harbinger of famine locally called 'Mautam' due to gregarious bamboo flowering, which increase the population of rat, bug, grasshopper, caterpillar and other insects those feed on bamboo seeds.

Mautam occurs in a cycle of 48 to 50 years and Mizoram had witnessed last Mautam in 1958, which claimed 103 lives in the state.

However, Mautam has already hit in north and eastern part last year and is predicted to spread across the state by next year.

Bamboo grows wildly in 6000 sqkms of Mizoram's total geographical area of 21,000 sqkm, accounting 40 per cent of the country's 80 -million tonne annual bamboo production. At least one-fourth of the bamboo forests of Mizoram are in south and eastern parts of the state.

Reports of large-scale increase in numbers of caterpillars, hemipteran bugs that are regarded as harbingers of famine have been pouring in from different parts of the state since 2004.

The leaf-rolling caterpillars and grasshoppers can cause extensive damage to paddy, which rolled paddy leaves and damaged their chlorophyll, agriculture officials added.

UNI