Agricultural scientists from ten states have embarked on a hunt to trace and isolate five harmful “invasive weeds” which made their way into the country through wheat imports. The Centre had imported a huge quantity of wheat for supply through the Public Distribution System to tide over a scarcity two years ago.

Surveillance officers are moving from village to village scanning backyards, compost pits and other places around godowns and fair price shops to locate the alien weeds Ambrosia Trifida, Viola Arvensis, Cenchrus Tribuloids, Cynoglosum Officinale and Carolinense. Plants of these foreign weeds have already been traced to Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Orissa, Maharashtra, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Karnataka, said Dr Jay G Varshney, Director of National Research Centre for Weed science. He told The Indian Express that the Centre had imported nearly 63 lakh metric tonnes of wheat in 2006-07 from Russia, Australia, Canada, Hungary, Europe, France, Argentina, Romania, Netherlands, Kazakhstan, and Bulgaria in which nearly 25 types of weed seeds were found.

“Initially, seeds of the relatively-unknown five invasive weeds were traced while we later intercepted nearly a dozen other species which came to India through this wheat import. We are not aware how these weeds could develop in our climatic conditions and how fast they could spread in our ecosystem. Besides, we have to study the possible effects on human and animal health”, he said adding that the Jabalpur-based Directorate of Weed Science Research has taken up a Rs 6.66 crore project for surveillance of these invasive weeds.

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