Lightning strike

[Hugh Harries]

Lightning strikes coconuts twice (and more)

Published by Luigi on December 12, 2007 in Fruits and nuts, Genebanks and Threats. 0 Comments

I'm still in the Philippines, but I've moved from rice to coconuts. That's in terms of what I'm discussing, not what I'm eating. I'm participating in a meeting of the curators of the five different regional components of the International Coconut Genebank, organized by COGENT. There's a lot of interesting stuff coming out, but what I wanted to show you now (it's actually the afternoon tea break) is something that was shown earlier today¹ to illustrate the problems that conservation of coconuts in field genebanks can face.

The image below comes from Google Earth and shows a small piece of one of the largest and most important coconut genebanks in the world, at the Marc Delorme Research Station just outside Abidjan, Ivory Coast. Those large gaps in the otherwise beautifully laid out genebank were caused by lightning strikes! The labourers grow their cassava there now. I'd never heard of this particular threat to ex situ conserved agrobiodiversity. This particular parcel seems to have been particularly unlucky, attracting strikes repeatedly over the years.

 

Footnotes:

1. By Roland Bourdeix of CIRAD. [↩]

Show on map

[Charles R. Clement]

Dear Coconut colleagues,

><http://agro.biodiver.se/2007/12/lightning-strikes-coconuts-twice-and-more/>Lightning

>strikes coconuts twice (and more)
>

Ex situ conservation is difficult on all sides!
Our peach palm (Bactris gasipaes) genebank in
Manaus, Amazonas, Brazil, was hit by an Amazonian
wind storm, which is a single high velocity blast
from the sky down. It was not as localized as the
lightening strikes that Roland Bourdeix showed,
but took out about 500 plants in a longish block
(we use 5 x 5 m spacing), representing the loss
of 55 accessions. If you are interested, put
these coordinates into Google Earth:
lat=-2.64379021269, lon=-60.0430806476 The
remaining plants in the block had been pruned to
small off-shoots shortly before the storm. These
wind storms occur widely across Amazonia.

Best regards,

Charles R. Clement
Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazônia - INPA
Coordenação de Pesquisas em Ciências Agronômicas - CPCA
Avenida André Araújo, 2936 - Aleixo
69060-001 Manaus, AM, Brasil
***
INPA Caixa Postal 478
69011-970 Manaus, AM, Brasil
***
tel. (55-92) 3643-1862
fax (55-92) 3643-1867
ccle...@inpa.gov.br
www.inpa.gov.br/cpca/charlesc.html

Se sua mensagem é muito importante, por favor faz
copias para charlesr...@yahoo.com.br e
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[Mike....@csiro.au]

The risk of lightning strike is universal in coconut plantations and the fact that 40 or more palms can be destroyed in one hit is a very sobering thought. Extra replication is the only solution, though I do wonder about the feasibility of lightning conductors such as are used on buildings. If there was only a very small number of palms of a particular population it would be advisable to construct a metal conductor that extended above the height of the canopy. This is a theoretical solution, so it would be valuable to hear from anyone who has actually made use of such conductors.
Mike Foale

-----Original Message-----
From: coc...@googlegroups.com on behalf of Hugh Harries
Sent: Thu 13/12/2007 5:22 AM
To: Google coconut group
Cc:
Subject: [Coconut:1509] Lightning strike

[Luigi]

That's fascinating Charles, thanks. Never heard of that either!

I put those coordinates in Google Earth, but I'm not sure what I'm
looking at, can you explain?

Regards

Luigi

On Dec 12, 11:01 pm, "Charles R. Clement"
<charlesr.clem...@yahoo.com.br> wrote:
> Dear Coconut colleagues,
>
> ><http://agro.biodiver.se/2007/12/lightning-strikes-coconuts-twice-and-...>Lightning

> cclem...@inpa.gov.brwww.inpa.gov.br/cpca/charlesc.html

>
> Se sua mensagem é muito importante, por favor faz

> copias para charlesr.clem...@yahoo.com.br e
> cclem...@vivax.com.br para driblar os anti-spam e anti-virus.

[Charles R. Clement]

Luigi et al.,

>That's fascinating Charles, thanks. Never heard of that either!
>I put those coordinates in Google Earth, but I'm
>not sure what I'm looking at, can you explain?

Sorry not to explain better. At those coordinates
there are 3 plantations within a forest matrix
(the precise coordinates are within the larger
section, which we call the central section of the
B. gasipaes genebank); the main highway is about
100 m east of the central section. Looking west
from the main road, you see a band of lighter
color within the plantation, with few darker
spots (the crowns of the B. gasipaes); that
lighter band was left by the wind storm when it
blew over the B. gasipaes plants and clumps. On
the north side of the central section the
plantation is almost uniform, as are the
rectangular southern section (that runs parallel
to the central section) and the rectangular
western section on the other side of a high
tension line. That shows how extremely localized
one of these wind storms can be. In this case,
ground level impact was about 100 m wide by 250 m long running east to west.

Abrazos,

Charles R. Clement
charlesr...@yahoo.com.br
ccle...@vivax.com.br
ccle...@inpa.gov.br
www.inpa.gov.br/cpca/charlesc.html
"Procrastine já! Não deixe para amanha." Ellen Degeneres
Please start using the new yahoo address, as the
other .com.br has become unreliable.
Please use all 3 addresses if your message is
very important, since anti-spam, anti-virus and
anti-junk now kill too many normal messages.
Por favor comece a usar o novo endereço yahoo,
pois o outro .com.br tem perdido qualidade.
Por favor use todos os 3 endereços se sua
mensagem é muito importante, pois anti-spam,
anti-virus e anti-lixo agora mata um grande número de mensagens normais.

[Hugh Harries]

Mike
Where did you find the information that "40 or more palms can be destroyed in one hit"?
Hugh

[Mike....@csiro.au]

Hugh

That was a personal observation of a strike in a field on Banika plantation, Solomon Islands. Both Alan Green of Unilever and I (employed by the government of the then British Solomon Islands) were witness to the sudden death of almost one acre of palms in Field 16 of that plantation, that took place during 1960 when he was my mentor for one year at the beginning of my research career. The symptoms of lightning strike were clear – progressive frond fall over a few weeks, more rapid near the centre of the affected area.

Cheers

Mike

-----Original Message-----
From: coc...@googlegroups.com [mailto:coc...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Hugh Harries
Sent: Friday, 14 December 2007 2:42 PM
To: coc...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [Coconut:1519] Re: Lightning strike

 

Mike
Where did you find the information that "40 or more palms can be destroyed in one hit"?
Hugh

--~----~----~------~----~------~--~---

[Severino Magat]

Dear Hugh and Mike,

 

In  Davao (Southern Mindanao, Philippines), not far from the equator, an major coconut region with rainfall almost uniformly distributed year-round (average rainfall of 2200 mm/year), the lightning pattern damage usually follows an almost circular one, with the center palms almost the direct hit (seldom recover) and about 4-6 surrounding palms moderately or slightly damaged.  Unless, budrot ensue in damage palms, palms may still recover in productivity in  1-2 years time from lightning strike.

 

Thus, under field conditions, an adjusted yield estimate could consider a 5 -10 % damage per ha, that is 95-90 surviving palms (if not replaced) if the the palm planting  density is 100 palms per ha (10 m x 10 m).  Such adjustment avoids overestimation of the actual yield in terms of nuts or copra.

 

Cheers,

 

Sev Magat

Mike....@csiro.au wrote:

---

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[Hugh Harries]

Mike

Did you or Alan ever write an account of the event at Banika plantation? I ask because, although you say symptoms of lightning strike were clear, your description of "progressive frond fall over a few weeks, more rapid near the centre" could equally well be symptoms of waterlogged soil after flooding, perhaps caused by heavy rainfall associated with the lightning.

As Sev Magat has indicated only those palms that are directly hit seldom recover and about 4-6 surrounding palms that are moderately or slightly damaged usually recover productivity in 1-2 years time although, as Sev says, t here is the possibility that bud rot might ensue. Did most of the Banika palms recover?

Wider spread from a single strike would certainly be unusual and other disease pathogens produce progressive frond fall but who would expect a disease to spread all across a field so quickly?

There are reports of lightning striking coconut palms as early as 1886 and in the 1920s Malayan planters disagreed about whether their palms were dying from an unknown disease or from lightning. Many years later it was learnt that the dying palms were in an area where coconut seednuts from the Caribbean coast of Panama had been planted. The theory was advanced that it was some of these that had died from an endemic disease to which the local Malayan coconut varieties were resistant. The theory was never tested but, if correct, it could account for the use of Malayan Dwarf types in Caribbean countries where lethal yellowing disease epidemics destroy local tall varieties.

West African tall varieties are also susceptble to the LY phytoplasma and Cape St Paul Wilt disease is currently active in Ghana. In September 2003 I enquired if it had crossed the border intro Ivory Coast and Joseph Nipah was able to          "confidently confirm" that it had not. He said that the coconut plantations in Cote d'Ivoire are over 150 km from the border, with oil palm plantations serving as a big barrier <http://www.cicy.mx/dir_acad/cicly/ivory.html>. Coincidentally, at about the same time, an entomolgist did mention losses of coconut palms near the border as due to lightning strike.

Perhaps Google Earth can be used to monitor coconut disease outbreaks? Somewhere in the archives are aerial photographs of LY disease, Foliar Decay Virus, cadang cadang viroid and similar disease outbreaks in commercial areas and research trial sites that might be used for comparison.

Hugh

[Mike....@csiro.au]

Hugh
I am searching the "archives" to check if Alan and I mnentioned the lightning strike in the annual report of the period.
Flooding and water-logging can be dismissed easily. The palms were over 50 years old at the time, located on a well-structured cracking clay soil situated on an uplifted coral "bench". Free drainage is a stong feature of this soil type. I do not recall that any damaged palms recovered. We noted that a curcular patch of palms had died and that the collapse of the crown was nost rapid in the middle of the patch.
The clustr of "crownless" coconut trunks stood for several years before crumbling in sections from the top.
Mike

-----Original Message-----
From: coc...@googlegroups.com on behalf of Hugh Harries

Sent: Sun 16/12/2007 6:03 PM
To: coc...@googlegroups.com
Cc:
Subject: [Coconut:1531] Re: Lightning strike