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Coffee pest threat
The coffee industry, which earns about K300 million annually, is under threat. The industry is being threatened by a new pest called the coffee borer, scientifically referred to as hypothenemus hampei.
The pest, which destroys the coffee berries and makes them useless for export, was found 50km away from the PNG-Indonesian border.
In a joint media statement released yesterday, Agriculture Minister Sasa Zibe and the Coffee Industry Corporation (CIC) chief executive officer Ricky Mitio said the pest was discovered in Wamena and Oksibil districts in the Papua province of Indonesia.
"Oksibil is only 90km from Tabubil and 50km from the PNG-Indonesia border," Messrs Zibe and Mitio said in the statement.
They said coffee borer is serious coffee pest that is found in countries of Africa, South America, Central America and South East Asia, and New Caledonia.
"Its presence in Wamena and Oksibil, very close to PNG, posed a very serious threat to the coffee industry in PNG."
They said the insect has the potential to infect and decimate coffee production by between 70% and 100% within 12 months, which could lead to an economical loss of more than K300 million.
"Its entry will affect the entire Highlands region, and other parts of PNG dependent on coffee," they added.
Mr Mitio said although the insect is not yet confirmed in PNG, like the incursion of most exotic plant disease and pests such as the potato late blight in 2002 and the cocoa pod borer this year, it is only a matter of time, and through carelessness, before the pest enters PNG.
The insect is a small black beetle about 1.5mm-3mm long. The female beetle bores into young as well as ripe coffee berries generally through the naval (tip) region.
Around 50 eggs on an average are laid in the tunnel within the mature coffee bean. The grubs (larvae) feed on the bean making small tunnels. Complete development from egg to adult takes between 25 and 35 days.
Mating normally takes place inside the berries and the female is capable of laying eggs three-to-four days after emergence. On average, the fertilized female lives up to 156 days and seeks out other fresh berries for oviposition.
In one year, up to eight generations of coffee borer are produced, giving rise to massive build-up of progeny per coffee season. It can be found in unripe and fallen coffee berries.
Mr Ziba said in PNG where coffee production occurs all year round, the spread and destruction will be rapid and recurring.
"The civil society of PNG should take diligence checks in all travels by road, sea and air in and out of the country and also travelling between coffee growing provinces and, in particular, into Papua province in Indonesia," he said.
The Minister said CIC scientists, in collaboration with the National Agriculture Quarantine and Inspection Authority (Naqia), were formulating a national emergency response plan which will be submitted to the national disaster committee shortly.
thenational.com
Coffee experts in Central America are advising farmers to ditch chemicals and stick to cheap, natural methods for keeping the infamous coffee borer beetle plague under control.
Experts gathered in Guatemala for a congress this week said evidence shows that simple methods like laying traps and clearing leftover coffee cherries are more effective than pesticides in reducing crop damage by the beetle, locally known as broca.
The beetle (Hypothenemus hampei), which bores into coffee fruit and eats the bean from the inside out, is present across Central America and is by far the most damaging coffee pest in the region.
In recent years the beetle has caused 5 percent, and sometimes more, of the crop to be lost, according to Guillermo Canet of regional coffee research group Promecafe.
A Guatemalan study presented at the National Coffee Congress found that beetle infestation rates could be reduced to under 1 percent with a minimal amount of insecticide -- just 1.7 liters per hectare sprayed on fields.
More important, it said, is the clearing of residual cherries on trees and on the ground after the harvest ends -- dubbed "sanitary harvesting" -- and placing traps made from plastic drink bottles in trees after flowering.
"We have managed to significantly reduce the volumes of chemicals used," Oscar Campos, director of beetle control at Guatemalan national coffee association Anacafe, told Reuters.
"With biologicals combined with manual controls and cultural practices, plus in recent years the use of traps, we have gotten low levels of infestation," he said.
Campos told farmers that chemicals, namely the generic insecticide Endosulfan, should be used only once a year and limited to extreme cases.
The clearing of residual cherries can be a self-financing activity. Though the low-quality beans collected are worthless to the international market, they can be used domestically and their sale generally covers the cost of collecting them.
Traps, hung midway up trees and filled with a mix of ethanol and methanol to attract beetles, drown those beetles that survive the clearing of cherries.
After the three months during which traps are effective, insecticides can be sprayed, but only if there are signs of a serious outbreak of the pest, said Campos, who also encouraged the use of a type of worm that feasts on the beetle.
While the lab work and traps are not free, Anacafe estimates that farmers who adopt the program will spend less than $30 per hectare and cut their crop losses to within 0.5 percent of the harvest from 3 percent at present.
The borer beetle first entered Guatemala in 1971 and slowly moved south, arriving in Panama last year and leaving no Latin American coffee-producing country free of the pest.
Source: Reuters
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