IPM for brinjal in South Asia http://telesupport.org

[bapuj...@gmail.com]

IPM for brinjal: Developed in a research partnership and sustainably
promoted by SMEs in South Asia

The development and effective transfer of a cost effective,
sustainable, non-pesticide based IPM technology for use in eggplant to
farmers in South Asia has been recognised by the Ryutaro Hashimoto
APFED Award 2008 Silver Prize for Good Practice given to Dr S. N.
Alam, Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute, at a recent award
ceremony.

This achievement was the culmination of several research programmes
funded by the Department for International Development, UK, European
Commission and latterly the Government of Bangladesh.

In Bangladesh eggplant, or brinjal is an affordable vegetable
available to all and represents 40% of all vegetables produced in the
country by weight. However, in order to produce the crop farmers were
using excessive levels of insecticides to control key pests, notably
the brinjal fruit and shoot borer. A survey of farmers showed that up
to 32% of cultivation costs were associated with insecticides and
damage levels of up to 70% were sustained even after applying
insecticides.
brinjal2

The main method of control of the brinjal borer, mass trapping, was
developed by the Asian Vegetable Research and Development Center and
Natural Resources Institute, UK, working in partnership in several
Indian states, notably, Gujarat, Anand Agricultural University;
Orissa, Orissa University of Agriculture and Technology; Jharkhand,
Rama Krishna Mission; West Bengal, Institute of Agriculture, Viswa
Bharati University; Meghalaya and Jharkhand, ICAR Research Complex for
Northeastern Hilly Region; Uttar Pradesh, Indian Institute of
Vegetable Research; and in Bangladesh with the Bangladesh Agricultural
Research Institute. In addition to mass trapping and crop hygiene a
range of locally available technologies were added to the IPM package
to improve effectiveness and control other constraints, these included
the egg parasitoid Trichogramma chilonis, used by IIVR and BARI. BARI
later introduced a braconid egg parasitoid, Bracon hibitor, when it
became commercially available. Bacterial wilt was controlled using
resistant root stock based on research from Greece and widely promoted
by IPMCRSP in Bangladesh, and in Gujarat, biopesticides such as
Trichoderma viride were introduced where farmers had problems with
soil borne pathogens.

Importantly, SMEs were encouraged to attend farmer events and provided
with technical assistance to enable them to produce high quality traps
and lures that would encourage farmers to adopt the technology. The
companies worked together to create the South Asia Society for the
Advancement of Pheromone Technology which has just celebrated its
third anniversary with a National Seminar in Chennai. In 2004 sales of
brinjal borer pheromone lures by six companies in India were less than
20,000 a year but two companies alone reported sales of 200,000 lures
in 2008 providing an unambiguous measure of sustainable impact at the
farmer level long after donor-funded projects had finished.

For more information:

Professor Alan Cork, Head of Agriculture, Health & Environment group,
Natural Resources Institute, University of Greenwich, UK email:
a.c...@gre.ac.uk