FARMERS’ PERCEPTION OF CLIMATE CHANGE AND PARTHENIUM WEED DISTRIBUTION IN DISTRICT SWABI, KHYBER PAKHTUNKHWA

Abstract

Climate change is the principal concern of present day agriculturists, environmental scientists and ecologists. Climate change and its negative impacts is still not fully understood and the concept is still criticized for its validity. The present research work consists of two phases. The first phase analyzed the farmers’ perception of climate change and its likely impact on weeds distribution by conducting a formal survey and in the 2nd phase a laboratory experiment was conducted on Parthenium weed selected from study area in Weed Science Department, The University of Agriculture, Peshawar to correlate the findings of both phasesin July-September, 2016. The field survey was carried out in Jan-May, 2016 in Swabi district, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa- Pakistan. 100 farmers from the study area were randomly interviewed through a questionnaire comprised of all relevant parameters to assess their perception of climate change and its consequences.  Most of the farmers (61%) believed in climate change and its negative consequences and complained of lower efficiency of their farming in the changed scenario. They had noticed climatic variations, for the last 20 years, in the form of  summers extension, winters flexion, unexpected and changed pattern of rainfalls (58% responses for increase) with summer rainfalls earlier (68%) and winter rainfalls later (35%), severe and destructive floods (75%), storms or strong winds (77%), hailstorms (67%) and higher  insects/ pests attack causing harm to crops (68%), livestock/ animal (64%) and humans. The changed scenario also posed difficulties to farmers in managing agricultural activities like abundance of weed species (62% farmers strongly agreed) especially the invasive ones e.g. Parthenium hysterophorus, Silybam marianum and Rumex crispus etc. They noticed increase in weed species (78%), frequency (69%) and interaction (78%) among native and invasive weeds. These weeds had aggressive (75%) and uncontrollable growth (68%), out competed the crops (82%), and survived longer (55%). From the field study Parthenium weed was concluded (82%) as the most responsive invasive weed to climate change and was selected for lab study. The experiment was laid out in Completely Randomized Design (CRD) with 4 replications. The treatments comprised of 5 different temperature regimes of 15, 20, 25, 30 and 35 °C in controlled situation in an incubator. The analysis illustrated that high germination % (34.50%) of Parthenium weed seeds occurred at higher temperature (30°C) than optimum (25°C) which was 29.25%, following the same pattern for the growth which remained more (19.75) and (17.45) at higher temperatures of (30°C) and (35°C) respectively than optimum (16.95). The conclusion of lab experiment was that the rise in temperature is favoring the growth of Parthenium weed. This weed is reported in the surveyed area to be highly aggressive and competitive for the indigenous flora expanding its domain in the area.