Papaya mealybug attacks Tanzania

 NaijaAgroNet

The papaya mealybug, also called Paracoccus marginatus, has been detected in Tanzania’s coastal areas and in Zanzibar island; consequently igniting alarm among the region’s scientific and agriculture community, NaijaAgroNet.

 

Experts at the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in Tanzania fear that the endemic pest could put food security and the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of farmers in jeopardy.

“The climates of coastal West Africa and coastal East Africa are similarly tropical and humid, and these conditions clearly favour the pest.”

James Legg, an entomologist with the IITA in Tanzania, who is leading the pest control initiative, toldSciDev.Net in a chat which was also monitored by NaijaAgroNet said “It is most likely that the insects that came to Tanzania arrived from South Asia, since their occurrence has not been recorded in central African countries and there is significant trade between Asia and coastal East Africa.

 

He added: “It is true, however, that the climates of coastal West Africa and coastal East Africa are similarly tropical and humid, and these conditions clearly favour the pest.”

According to Legg, who first detected the pest in Tanzania, the insect could spread to other parts of the East African coast, including the Kenyan coast in the coming two years.

Another expert, Douglas Miano, a lecturer at Kenya-based University of Nairobi’s Department of Plant Science and Crop Protection,NaijaAgroNet, suggested a way to help control the pest, which attacks the leaves, branches and fruits of the target plant: “Inspecting plant material would greatly help to control the spread of the pest,” Miano says.

Cyriacus Nnaji/ GEE

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