Sign up for our daily Newsletter and stay up to date with all the latest news!

Subscribe I am already a subscriber

You are using software which is blocking our advertisements (adblocker).

As we provide the news for free, we are relying on revenues from our banners. So please disable your adblocker and reload the page to continue using this site.
Thanks!

Click here for a guide on disabling your adblocker.

Sign up for our daily Newsletter and stay up to date with all the latest news!

Subscribe I am already a subscriber

Task force formed to fight coconut pest outbreak in Philippines

The coconut industry faces perhaps the worst problem it has encountered in many decades. The coconut scale insect (CSI) infestation has affected more than 1.2 million coconut trees in the CALABARZON. The pest infestation starts with yellowing of the lowermost leaves, followed by drying of all leaves leaving only the youngest leaf green and ultimately the death of the palm. The CALABARZON area, especially Batangas province, has been reported to be the most severely hit by the insect pest. The CALABARZON area supplies 42 percent and 14 percent of Luzon’s and the country’s total coconut production, respectively. The infestation of more than 6,000 trees in 15 barangays in Isabela City, Basilan has also been reported.

Thus, this infestation has had a huge damaging effect on the livelihood of many farmers and on the coconut industry. The Philippine Coconut Authority of the Department of Agriculture (PCA-DA) estimates that 25 million Filipinos rely upon the industry, 3.5 million of whom are coconut farmers. Twenty-seven (27) percent of the country’s agricultural land are planted to coconut. Sixty-eight (68) out of 79 provinces in the country grow coconuts (PCA 2010). As one of the top five exports of the country earning US$1 billion in 2011, coconut and its products contribute an annual average of 5.79 percent to the country’s gross value added (GVA) and 1.14 percent to gross national product (GNP).

The CSI’s presence in the CALABARZON area was first reported in 2010 in Tanauan, Batangas and has been spreading to nearby towns and provinces as far as Marinduque and Mindoro. The infestation is expected to spread to other areas of the country due to temperature, relative humidity, wind direction, and planting density.

To address the rapid spread and wide scale damage of the CSI, PCA-DA created the Scale Insect Comprehensive Action Program (SICAP) Task Force on Aug. 28, 2013. The SICAP provided PCA-DA researchers with the opportunity to work with other scientists and institutions to craft strategies to address the CSI problem. The task force is composed of experts from the PCA-DA, the University of the Philippines Los Baños, Philippine Council for Agriculture, Aquatic and Natural Resources Research and Development (PCAARRD) of the Department of Science and Technology and the Department of Trade and Industry.

The general strategy adopted by the SICAP Task Force is as follows: (1) As an interim measure, the program seeks to manage the outbreak and its spread so that it will not cause more economic damage to farmers and the industry. (2) In the medium-term, research on and implementation of sustainable control measures using biological control agents will be conducted.

Source: philstar.com
Publication date:

Related Articles → See More