Mizoram families affected by ‘rawthing’ rose to 4756: Officials

Aizawl: The number of farming families affected by the gregarious flowering of ‘rawthing’ or ‘bambusa tulda’ has risen to 4,756 in at least 150 villages across all the 11 districts of Mizoram till date, state agriculture and farmers’ welfare department officials said on Monday.Updated reports indicate widespread devastation caused by the population explosion of rodents, which continues to pour in, the officials said.The officials said of 6,938.154 cultivation areas identified so far, 1,988.34 hectares of cultivation areas have so far been fully or partly ravaged by swarms of rats.They added while paddy is the major crop devastated by the rats, other crops such as maize, sugarcane, cow pea, ginger, eggplant, chilli, pumpkin, sesame and cucumber are also affected in some areas.At least 186kg of rodenticides, mainly bromadiolone and zinc phosphide, are being used to poison rats. Traditional methods, including slingshots and local rodent traps such as ‘vaithang’, ‘mangkhawng’ and ‘thangchep’, are also used by the farmers to kill rats in the paddy fields.The officials admitted that though traditional agricultural scientists predicted the occurrence of ‘thingtam’, the pheonomenon of gregarious flowering of ‘rawthing’ this year, the state govt has been ill-prepared to combat the impending population of rats caused by ‘thingtam’.‘Thingtam’, similar to ‘mautam’ or gregarious flowering of a bamboo species called ‘mautak’ (melocanna bacciferra), occurs in a cycle of every 48 years and the last ‘thingtam’ took place in 1977.