by
Nguyen Huu Huan, Vice Director General, Plant Protection Department, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Farmer who suffered hopperburn in Thai Nguyen province
The Plant Protection Sub Department of Thai Nguyen Province in northeastern Vietnam has filed a report stating that about 3,000 ha of paddy have been infested by rice planthoppers. Population densities were at 1,500 hoppers/m2 and about 800 ha were severely damaged. In another 4,100 ha insecticide sprays have been implemented. The Phu Bình district is the largest rice bowl of Thai Nguyen Province and 2,000 ha were infested by planthoppers (Read: Nong Nghiep news item).
Thai Nguyen map
Meanwhile the Mekong Delta is getting a bumper harvest (Read: Mekong Delta reports bumper rice crop) . The Delta harvested a bumper summer-autumn rice crop this year, despite unfavorable conditions and pest threats reported earlier in the year. The Plant Protection Department (PPD) has successfully implemented various measures, such as Ba Giam Ba Tang, 1 Phai 5 Giam and “escape strategy” to prevent and control rice diseases and pests, including brown planthoppers and the virus diseases they carry (Read: Escape strategy). The “escape strategy”, an ecological engineering technique, introduced 4 years ago and adopted by most provinces in the Delta helped to reduce the percentage of viruliferous BPH dramatically to less than 5% (Read: Ecological engineering explained in Vietnamese). The 2010 summer-autumn crop had the lowest pest infestation since 2005.
The Delta has harvested more than 1.4 million ha of rice with an average paddy yield of 4.94 tons per ha. In this year’s summer-autumn crop farmers cultivated 1.6 mllion ha and the total paddy output was estimated to reach more than 8 million tons.
Vietnam will have enough rice reserves to export according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) (Read: Vietnam has enough reserve for rice export). This August, Viet Nam exported 813,000 tons of rice, about 177% more than the August 2009 production of 460,000 tons.
