Plant Health Rallies to help control West Indian fruit fly in Grenada

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Two Plant Health Rallies have recently been held in Grenada to raise awareness of the West Indian Fruit fly and promote the control of this pest using fruit fly bait stations. The rallies, which were organised in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture, Lands, Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, were aimed at local farmers with the…
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Ghanaian droughts foreseen and Nepali floods that have been

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Article by Sebastian Avery. Hope leaves Ghanaian farmers as another expected late rainfall leads to the possibility of drought. We can only pray that history does not repeat itself. As some of you may know 2007 was disastrous for Ghanaian farmers especially those living in the White Volta Basin. This is because a very similar…
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Plantwise in Pakistan and its opportunities to share knowledge

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  In June 2014, Dr Aamir H Malik, CABI Country Coordinator for Pakistan, Cambria Finegold, Head of Project Development for the Plantwise Knowledge Bank and Julien Lamontagne-Godwin, Plantwise scientific officer, organised a workshop in Islamabad that united major stakeholders in the Pakistani plant health system. These included the departments of Extension and Adaptive Research, Pest…
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Update: New Pest & Disease Records (25 Jun 14)

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We’ve selected a few of the latest new geographic, host and species records for plant pests and diseases from CAB Abstracts. Records this fortnight include the first report of bacterial leaf blight of jute caused by Xanthomonas campestris pv. capsularii in India, the molecular characterization of a novel victorivirus from the entomopathogenic fungus Beauveria bassiana and…
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A plant doctor’s fight against rice blast in Tamil Nadu, India

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Story by Malvika Chaudhary, CABI in India Photo: Saurav Paul Vargur is a small village in the Tamil Nadu state of India where paddy is grown on a large scale. The plant clinics in this region are very popular with farmers. For plant doctor Sarangpani it was a usual day, anticipating the regular crowd of paddy farmers in…
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World Food Prize 2014

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This week, the President of the World Food Prize Foundation, Ambassador Kenneth M. Quinn announced that Dr. Sanjaya Rajaram has been selected as the 2014 World Food Prize Laureate for his contribution to improving wheat yields. Dr. Rajaram’s work on crossing winter and spring wheat varieties resulted in an impressive 480 wheat varieties which have…
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Update: Plant Health News (18 Jun 14)

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Here’s a taste of some of the latest stories about plant health, including chemical-free citrus post-harvest becoming the new standard, how weeds could help feed billions in a warming world and the rehabilitation of banana fields devastated by Xanthomonas wilt in DRC. Click on the link to read more of the latest plant health news!
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Better land care could add US $1.4 Trillion to economy

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With over two-thirds of the earth’s land surfaced being used for agricultural production, there is no human activity today which puts more pressure on natural resources. This scidevnet article, reporting from last year’s summit of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification conference in Windhoek, Namibia establishes that it is not only ecologically responsible to promote…
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Update: New Pest & Disease Records (11 Jun 14)

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We’ve selected a few of the latest new geographic, host and species records for plant pests and diseases from CAB Abstracts. Records this fortnight include Phytophthora cinnamomi in the rhizosphere of agricultural crops in southern Bahia (Brazil),  the first report of Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. cubense tropical race 4 associated with Panama disease of banana outside…
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Plantwise going strong in Democratic Republic of Congo

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Plantwise has been active in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) since 2006. It has been doing admirable work with the cocoa growers of ESCO Kivu and the “Universite Catholique du Graben” in North Kivu province in the last 5 years. However, since November 2013, the focus has been on getting the central government figures of…
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