Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Wyra, Khammam 18th Parthenium Awareness Week – 16.08.2023 To 22.03.2023

The parthenium plants (Parthenium hysterophorus) commonly called Congress grass or carrot grass is an alien weed with origins in Mexico, America, Trinidad and Argentina. It entered India along with wheat imports from USA in the early 1950s in Pune, Maharashtra. From then, it spread alarmingly both in urban and rural areas throughout the country and which now is a menace. They are commonly observed in agricultural crops like rice, jowar, maize, bajra, peanuts, green gram and red gram thereby reducing their output and increase the cost of cultivation as well as non-crop areas like railway tracks, roadside, waste lands, gardens and so on.These plants are annual herbaceous plants growing to a height of 0.5 to 1.5 m spreading through seeds as it is a prolific seed producer and is spread by air, water and human activities to a certain extent. This weed causes health problems like skin allergies, hay fever, dermatitis, eczema, breathing problems in human beings and animals besides reducing agricultural productivity and loss of biodiversity as they supress the growth of desired plants. On consumption, it can cause mouth ulcers with extreme salivation and diarrhoea in human whereas in animals it can cause reduced milk and meat quality. It highly invasive weed of pasture affecting the grazing lands thereby reducing their efficiency. These weeds are a serious threat to primary production and biodiversity reducing farm and forest productivity, displace native species and contribute significantly to land and water degradation. The general methods for weed management include preventing weeds from developing seed, perpetuating the weed problem, cultivation that hinder parthenium plants, use of cover crops, mowing, flaming, hand-removal, mulches and soil solarization. In view of the seriousness and magnitude of the threat posed by this weed, every year during 3rd week of August (16.08.2023 to 21.08.2023), awareness programmes and cleaning activities on large scale taken by ICAR institutes from 2004. As part of 18th Parthenium Awareness Week, KVK Wyra organised the cleaning of KVK demo units and campus along with cleaning and awareness programmes in villages of Khammam district.