Inception workshop participants
In the last few years rice production in several countries has been severely reduced by insect pests called planthoppers. Besides causing crops to wilt in a condition called “hopperburn”, they also transmit virus diseases. Vietnam has lost about a million tons of rice to this menace since 2006. And in China as much as 4 million tons of rice have been lost in the same period.
Thirty scientists from Australia, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Vietnam and the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) held a workshop in Ho Chi Minh City to develop sustainable strategies to manage this problem. They will develop methods that are broad based that not only build defense in the rice crop, but also defense in the surrounding areas using a new approach called “ecological engineering” pioneered by Professor Geoff Gurr of Australia. “Pests are often kept under control by many predators that live in areas surrounding rice fields. We can engineer the landscape such that these areas become homes to these predator friends”.
In opening the workshop, His Excellency, the Vice Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development of Vietnam, Dr Bui Ba Bong, expressed his special thanks to the the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and IRRI for responding to this urgent need to find sustainable solutions to the pest outbreaks. “With this project we will be able to develop management strategies that are environmentally friendly and will focus on reducing farmers’ risk of losing their crops to outbreaks”. “Very often when pest outbreaks occur, farmers use too much pesticides and we must strive to avoid this” said the Vice Minister.
The initiative was developed by IRRI and funded by the ADB. “Losses due to pest outbreaks are preventable and this project will enable scientists to use their ecological and virology knowledge, plant breeding skills and communication techniques to develop more sustainable approaches” said Dr K.L. Heong, the leader of the project. “We need to motivate thousands of farmers to conserve the predators and effective communication is essential” said Dr. M.M. Escalada, a communication scientist from the Philippines.
The pests also carry virus diseases and infected plants become discolored and stunted with no grains. “Our strategy is to develop methods to limit the spread of the viruses” said Dr I.R. Choi, a scientist at IRRI.
“One way to limit the pest population is to develop rice varieties that have resistance and we are developing new ways to incorporate these genes by plant breeding” said Dr P. Virk, a senior plant breeder at the IRRI.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
We have a small rice farm in one of the towns here in Leyte. For several years now, we and the other farmers in our community have experienced losses due to “tungro” infestation. I asked some of the farmers how they tried to control the disease. The common answer I got was they use Furadan to control the yellowing of the leaves. I’m not an agriculture major but I know from my plant protection course that “tungro” is a disease that’s transmitted by the green leafhoppers. So, I suspect that there’s something wrong in the way the farmers manage the disease. How I wish there will be a project similar to yours here in our province that could help reduce farmers’ risk of losing their crops to pests and diseases outbreaks.
Edith
You are right. Tungro is a virus disease transmitted by the green leafhopper and using Furadan is not useful. Where about is your farm in Leyte? Very often I find that farmers tend to suspect yellow symptoms in their fields to be tungro. But yellowing can be due to other reasons, like lack of fertilizer, soil deficiency and even water shortage. There is need to first check these. I suspect you might not be experiencing tungro.
Dear Dr. Heong
Thank you for taking time to share your ideas about our pest problem. We are from Abuyog, Leyte. Farmers here apply fertilizer; I just don’t know if the volume is sufficient. We also experience water shortage during the dry season cropping. But we have a big problem with green leafhoppers. We notice that there are months that the hopper population is too high. These are the times that we experience yellowing of rice leaves. We tried planting varieties that are known to be resistant to tungro, such as Matatag, masipag, and some farmer-selected varieties. This was when we were able to get better yields. Could it be that one way to lessen our losses is through the use of pest or disease-resistant varieties?
Edith,
Yes you are right, the use of resistant varieties is one way to manage tungro incidence and there are now available tungro resistant varieties in the Philippines released by NSIC such as NSICRc 112 and NSICRc 140 which have not only tungro resistance but are also high yielding. The Matatag series were released as stop gap varieties only in areas that experience widespread tungro incidence but yield only about 5T per ha, thus when tungro incidence is already low the farmer needs to replace it with really high yielding varieties. I am not familiar with the resistance of the Masipag varieties. There are other technologies that could be used to manage tungro incidence and I will refer you to the uploaded material on RTD management in Resources of this blog. Thanks
Roger,
Yes, we’ve noticed that the yield of matatag is not that high. In fact , last cropping season we only got lower than 5T becasue we also had water problem. We’ll try to ask the DA people where can we get seeds of NSIC 112 and 140. Thank you very much.