Integrated Pest Management to Boost Dragon Fruit Production in Viet Nam

[NNadir]

I am on the International Atomic Energy Agency's mailing list, and this note was in my email this morning:

Integrated Pest Management to Boost Dragon Fruit Production in Viet Nam

Some excerpts from the open sourced link:

There is a reason why dragon fruit is considered a rich and famous fruit in Viet Nam: it is exported to 40 countries and return from dragon fruit production is several times higher than from rice production.

In Binh Thuan province, around 29 500 hectares are dedicated to growing the fruit, with a production of nearly 600 000 tonnes last year, and its Department of Agriculture and Rural Development plans to increase that by 2020. However, this plan may be hindered by formidable pests capable of decimating dragon fruit crops: fruit flies.

“Dragon fruit is a favourite crop in Viet Nam because farmers are aware of its potential to earn them a steady income,” said Hien Thanh Thi Nguyen, Deputy Head of the Entomology Division at Viet Nam's Plant Protection Research Institute. “Unlike many other fruits that are seasonal, dragon fruit can be cultivated all year round and each crop season lasts only two and a half months, so it has great economic importance. The fruit is very important for the province’s economy, but the fruit flies are a big problem for this area.”

Therefore, the Plant Protection Research Institute, along with staff from the Agriculture and Rural Development Department of Binh Thuan province, teamed up with the IAEA and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in a pilot project to test the effectiveness of implementing an integrated pest management approach, including a form of insect pest control known as the Sterile Insect Technique (SIT). Using this technique, fruit flies are mass-produced and then sterilized using ionizing radiation before being released into the environment to mate with wild flies, producing no offspring.

The technique is designed to reduce the fruit fly population by releasing sterilized animals into the area where they mate with fertile animals (who mate only once) resulting in a failure to reproduce.

The technique can be utilized either to eliminate or greatly reduce dependence on pesticides.

The program met resistance, until authorities were able to educate the farmers:

Getting to the point of SIT implementation has not been easy, due to limited knowledge of the technique within the local offices and resistance from dragon fruit farmers, who did not at first understand how releasing more flies into the fields would ultimately reduce the population.

“They didn’t understand that the fruit fly would be sterilized,” said Hien. “They would say, ‘We have so many flies already, how can we combat this by bringing in more flies?’ So, we had to change the way we approached farmers about this with a series of trainings, leaflets and television advertisements, and it took about two years before they started thinking that maybe this could help. It’s important because getting the programme to work depends on the farmers in the entire area actively participating in the pest management.”

It appears that the farmers were able to overcome their initial ignorance; I kind of, sorta, after a fashion, wish American anti-nukes were willing to address their ignorance, but that's not likely to happen. (We have a "Nuclear Free" group here at DU, but not a "Fossil Fuel Free" group.) Anti-nukes are very cult like, in the sense that no amount of information can cause them to change their minds.

It is interesting to note that Agent Orange, a persistent chlorinated aromatic compound routinely dumped on Vietnam for defoliation, can be dechlorinated by irradiation, as can many historical chlorinated pesticides, of which DDT is the most famous example.

In many cases there are no other techniques that can or will work.

Sigh...

I wish you a pleasant Sunday afternoon.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. We teach integrated pest management techniques at a micro level

as part of the Master Gardeners' community outreach efforts. We try to teach people not to get rid of garden pests by dumping poisons all over their yards, but instead to use the most natural and least dangerous methods before resorting to chemicals. Explaining why covering your garden with pesticides to get rid of Japanese beetles isn't the best way to do it, and is actually destructive, can be a tough sell, but I've seen more and more people start to understand why IPM is a good idea. At the home gardener level it's a little thing, but it's a start.