Chandigarh, March 19 -- The Punjab government may have been motivating Malwa farmers to expand the area under cotton as the sowing will begin from the first week of April, in the absence of genetically modified Bollgard-III stage of BT seeds resistant to pink bollworm pest, the efforts may yield the desired results.

As per the figures from the Punjab Agricultural University (PAU), Ludhiana, the area under cultivation of the cash crop has come down to the lowest of all times since the past three decades to 98,000 hectares in 2024 and what is worrying is the entire area has shifted under was guzzling paddy, which bring fixed income for the farmers, even though it is much less than what was earned from cotton.

The state government is worri...