PushPull which does not involve application of any chemical pesticides is being tested for the control of diamondback month, cabbage aphid, green peach aphid, Indian mustard aphid, the most devastating insect pest in cabbage production areas.
ARUSHA – AGRICULTURAL gurus at the World Vegetable Center (WorldVeg) in Arusha region have teamed up with the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE) from Nairobi, Kenya to introduce a new biological control technology in the management of insect pests in vegetable production.
PushPull (P-P), a technology that does not involve application of any chemical pesticides is being tested for the control of diamondback month, cabbage aphid, green peach aphid, Indian mustard aphid, the most devastating insect pest in cabbage production areas.
Among the biotic factors which play a vital role in causing significant damage to agricultural production and productivity worldwide are a wide range of plant and post-harvest insect pests and diseases for which studies have shown that global crop losses due to pests and diseases are tremendous and significant implying to food shortage and hence food insecurity.
Records shows that in Tanzania, between 40 to 100 percent of tomato yield loss is due to bacterial wilt disease, primarily caused by Ralstonia solanacearum bacteria species complex, and is an important disease of solanaceous crops such as tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, potatoes and nightshade including other types of crops such as watermelon.
Dr. Simon Boniface, Entomologist and Laboratory Manager who also leads a plant health team at the Worldveg Arusha, expressed that the introduced technology is based on the use of repellent and attractive plants intercropped with the targeted crop (main crop).
“As such, the repellent plant pushes the targeted insect pest away from the main crop and at the same time the pest gets attracted and trapped by the attractive crop (pull), and hence reduces the impact of the pest on the main crop to non-economical level. The push-pull technology, therefore, can be employed and it fits well in the integrated pest management (IPM) programs in the management of agricultural insect pests,” he recently told Go! Tanzania in an exclusive interview in Arusha.
Dr. Boniface acknowledged that the technology (PP-T) research activity is under AGROVEG Project, funded by Biovision Foundation with the main objective of validating the push-pull technology to control pests on crucifers in order to enhance intercropping, eco-friendly and sustainable IPM technologies, and upscale the use of improved varieties in Tanzania.
Besides dealing with controlling insect pests on vegetables, WorldVeg also researches extensively on the strategies to control various plant diseases.
“Various research carried across the country established that tomato, cabbage, carrot and green pepper stand among the vegetables that are highly prone to different diseases, exacerbating to great challenge and yield losses experienced by the involved farmers, hence the need to assist the involving farmers, ” he said.
He informed that through the project known as Fruit and Vegetables for Sustainable Healthy Diets (FRESH) Project, the center has been running a series of helpful measure that have so far started to fetch promising results.
“The robust project is currently operating in Arusha and Kilimanjaro Regions is funded by multiple CGIAR Trust Fund funding organizations,” he explained.
According to Dr. Bomiface, at the preliminary stages of the project, they conducted a series of all-round focus group discussions and training sessions with the involved farmers targeting to understand the kind of major pests and diseases and other constraints that are vastly troubling vegetable production in their areas in order to stand a professional side to bring them proper solutions in a form of good agricultural practices (GAPs) packages.
After the stage, he unveiled that the experts in the Entomology, Micro-biology, agronomy and agribusiness Units at the WorldVeg formed solution packages to solve the problems including collection of plant samples from the farmers’ fields to diagnose the types of pathogens causing the diseases in order to plan for effective means to manage the diseases.
“Good agricultural practices are being delivered to the farmers in form of demonstration plots in a participatory approach both theoretically and practically to ensure proper understanding by the farmers so that they can finally adopt the technologies and hence sustainable vegetable production to improve household nutrition and income,” he shared.
The agricultural specialist added that as preliminary outcomes of the continuing project, the beneficiary farmers have started to observe some fruitful results, including increased awareness in the importance of using improved varieties, reduction in pesticide usage, increased profit in tomato production, improved seedling and plant growth, and significant irrigation water savings.
He mentioned some of the GAPs that they deliver to the farmers as being the use of improved varieties, nursery establishment and management, proper land preparation, planting with recommended plant spacing, proper irrigation/plant nutrition, weed control including plastic mulch, pests and diseases identification, irrigation water use efficiency, uprooting/destroying infected and infested plants, use of insect traps, crop rotation, judicial use of chemical pesticides, weekly/bi-weekly trainings and Farmers’ Field Days.
He detailed that most of the research activities that WorldVeg conducts are implemented in collaboration with various public as well as private institutions such as Tanzania Agricultural Research Institute (TARI), National Irrigation Commission (NIRC), Tanzania Plant Health and Pesticides Authority (TPHPA), as well as academia, including the Sokoine University of Agriculture (SUA) and Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology (NM-AIST).
Dispensing under the key theme of ‘Sowing Seeds, Meeting Needs’, Worldveg which recently celebrated 50 years anniversary of it excelling performance launched its mission in 1992 in Arusha, Northern Tanzania, after it was founded in 1973 in Asia, and today the center has professional research and development staff working across the globe on important vegetable crops such as tomato, pepper, onion and cabbage, as well as a range of African traditional vegetables, and partners with more than 40 national institutions and many international organizations.
The Center operates three regional bases in Africa: in Arusha, Tanzania for Eastern and Southern Africa, in Bamako, Mali for West and Central Africa – Dry Regions (established 2014), and in Cotonou, Benin for West and Central Africa – Coastal and Humid Regions (2017). There is a liaison office in Cameroon to reach into sub-Saharan Africa with improved vegetable varieties and production technologies.
