Black Sigatoka Ravages Caribbean
Caribbean banana farmers are abandoning fields where crops have been badly affected by Black Sigatoka disease. Black Sigatoka has badly affected several countries in the region, including Dominica, St. Lucia, Grenada and Guyana. Black Sigatoka is considered the most destructive disease of bananas and plantains and is caused by the fungus Mycosphaerella fijiensis. It first arrived in…
Makerere University brings Plantwise to class
Contributed with content from Joseph Mulema, CABI in Africa Since 2005, Plantwise has been supporting the establishment of plant clinics and knowledge bank access in Uganda. But recently, plans to expand clinic operations to each sub-county have led to increased demand for trained and knowledgeable plant doctors. To answer this call, and provide a promising…
Update: New Pest & Disease Records (07 Aug 13)
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 fungi associated with boll and lint rot of cotton in Iran, leaf spot-causing pathogen Nigrospora sphaerica found on mango for the first time and Bursaphelenchus koreanus found in packaging wood from South…
Video Interview with Sierra Leone’s Minister of Agriculture
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzwblzjR2pA&w=560&h=315] Recently Melanie Bateman of CABI Switzerland and Dr IMO Shamie, Sierra Leone’s Director of Crops and Plantwise National Coordinator, had the unique opporunity to sit down for a meeting with Sierra Leone’s Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Food Security, Dr Joseph Sam Sesay. During the meeting, Dr Sesay told his story of being the first…
Update: Plant Health News (31 Jul 13)
Here’s a taste of some of the latest stories about plant health, including reports of citrus greening (huanglongbing) in Paraguay, the discovery of genes resistant to Phytophthora sojae in soybeans and a computer model that gives early warning signs of crop failure. Click on the link to read more of the latest plant health news!
Two million red palm weevils removed without the use of pesticides
In the first half of 2013 two million red palm weevils were removed from farms in Abu Dhabi using pheromone traps. The large number of red palm weevils in the area prompted the launch of the initiative, which forms part of the Abu Dhabi Farmers’ Services Centre’s (ADFSC) Integrated Pest Management project. The project was…
Update: New Pest & Disease Records (24 Jul 13)
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 fruit rot caused by Botryosphaeria dothidea on European pear in Italy, the first report of soybean cyst nematode (Heterodera glycines) on tobacco in Henan, central China and the…
Open source seeds
“Open source software is accompanied by a licence that encourages people to share it and create new programs with it, and at the same time prevents anyone from releasing a program that uses the code under any other form of licence. The creativity embedded in the code cannot be privatised. Kloppenburg and a group of…
Plantwise supporting implementation of the International Code of Conduct on Pesticide Management
Contributed by Melanie Bateman, CABI Switzerland In the mid-1980s, in order to respond to problems associated with the sale and use of pesticides, the FAO Conference adopted the International Code of Conduct on the Distribution and Use of Pesticides. This document has subsequently been revised several times in order to keep pace with changing circumstances.…