*KARACHI : *China is planning to dispatch a 100,000-strong army of ducksto help Pakistan combat a massive locust infestation, a local newspaperreported on Thursday.
The legion of lotus-eating waterfowl will be sent from the eastern provinceof Zhejiang following the earlier arrival of a team of Chinese experts inPakistan to advise on how to tackle the infestation, said to be the worstin 20 years, the Ningbo Evening News said.
China deployed ducks, whose natural diet includes insects, to fight asimilar infestation in the north-western Xinjiang region two decades ago,reportedly with considerable effectiveness.
Their use is both much less expensive and environmentally-damaging thanpesticides, the paper quoted a Zhejiang Provincial Institute ofAgricultural Technology researcher, Lu Lizhi, as saying.
Ducks are also more suited to the task than other poultry, such aschickens, Lu said.
“Ducks like to stay in a group, so they’re easier to manage than chickens,”he said. A duck is also capable of eating more than 200 locusts per day,compared to just 70 for a chicken, Lu said. “They have three times thecombat capability,” he added.
Read Top Stories
Calls to the provincial government’s press office and the agriculturalsciences institute seeking confirmation of the report went unanswered onThursday.
Th locus swarm laid waste to Pakistan’s cotton crop after invading lastyear and now threatens the wheat harvest.
The article originally appeared in *The Guardianlink*
