DOHA: Providing utmost services to help grow local production manifold, the Ministry of Municipality and Environment has launched hotline to protect palm trees from harmful insects and pests like red palm weevil.

Farmers have been advised to call the department concerned at the Ministry on phone numbers 44261728 and 44261729 in case of detecting any activity of harmful pest in palm trees to protect the date crops in the season.

“Pesticide Spraying Unit at the Agricultural Quarantine and Plants’ Prevention Section of the Agricultural Affairs Department opens from 5am to 10am during holy month of Ramadan,” the Ministry has tweeted.

Green date fruits started appearing on palm trees and according to the local farmers, harvesting season of dates is expected to begin from last week of June. “At least one type of date we are expecting by the end of June at our farm, however, harvest of good quality dates ripen and half-ripen like shishi, rutab and khalas will begin from the second week of July,” Naimullah Seddiqui, in-charge of a farm at Al Khor suburbs told The Peninsula.

He said that caring of palm trees is intensified by the beginning of March when trees were cleaned with water. “Pollination and spraying pesticide on palm trees are key services required for better harvest,” said Seddiqui, adding that the Ministry of Municipality and Environment provided great support to farms in the process of pollination and pesticides for fighting diseases.

He said weevil larvae makes holes in the trunk of palm trees up to a metre long, thereby weakening and eventually killing the host plant. As a result, the weevil is considered a major pest in palm plantations.

Qatar’s self-sufficiency in date production reached 86 percent, according to a recent report issued by the Ministry of Municipality and Environment. However, the Ministry is pursuing to boost the production further. The hotline is part of a major plan of the Ministry to increase the self-sufficiency in food products by providing all possible support to local farmers in a bid to ensure food security in the country.

According to a Ministry report, palm trees increased over a million in 2016 from 334,481 in 1991 in Qatar. About 67,398 palm trees were recorded at the registered farms, which include 531,020 fruit palm trees.

Like other plants, palm trees are exposed to agricultural pests, whether they are insects, fungi or acacia. Red palm weevil is one of the most dangerous pests in Qatar and other GCC countries, said the Ministry.

The Ministry provided many services to palm tree farms like pest control, pollination and many more. To provide a complete guideline, the Ministry issued a special calendar about caring palm trees round the year.

Hassad Food, Qatar’s premier investor in food and agri-business sector, is running a large dates packaging factory with the capacity of over 2,000 tonnes in a year, said Mubarak Al Sahuti, CEO of the Factory for Commercial Relations in a talk show of Qatar TV recently. The factory aims at providing good quality local dates to consumers safely and storing for strategic reserve of the fruit in the country.