Introduction
The Department of Plant Protection has the mandate to undertake desert locust survey and control operations in the scheduled desert area of the country which may extend to about 300,000 sq. km to save the valuable agricultural crops. Due to the peculiar geographic location, Pakistan have two breeding zones.
1. Winter-Spring Breeding Zone
2. Summer-Monsoon Breeding zone.
The Winter-spring breeding zone comprises of the desert of Kharan, Khuzdar, and Nushki up to Taftan and the coastal belt of Balochistan where the desert areas facilitate the exogenous locust swarms/population to breed further and to move onward to the eastern parts of the country. Here routine locust survey is undertaken by the Department from 01st February-30th June every year to have a watch over the locust activities.
The summer-monsoon breeding zone comprises of Tharparkar / Nara deserts of Sindh and Cholistan desert of Punjab where routine locust survey is undertaken by the Department from 1st June to 30th September every year in order to keep strict vigilance on indigenous breeding as well as on the exogenous locust movement from the Indian side.
