ICIPE to strengthen fight against fruit fly to boost Kenya mango exports

International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (Icipe) has imported a wasp from Hawaii to help mango farmers at the Coast fight fruit flies. The biggest threat to mango production in Africa is the pest, also known as Fopius Arisanus, Icipe Africa fruit fly programme leader Dr Sunday Ekesi said.

Kenya’s mango exports have been locked out of lucrative global markets such as South Africa, Europe, the Middle East, Japan and US after being infested by the fly. Yield loss on mangoes in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda due to the fruit fly ranges between 30 and 70 per cent depending on the locality, season, and variety of the fruit, he said. A recent study funded by Agricultural Business Development indicated that more than 80,000 households at the Coast engage in mango production with an estimated one million people earning their livelihood from the sector.

“There are more than 18,000 hectares with 1.3 million trees under cultivation,” said Mr Gachanja Githende, a researcher in a past interview. He said the industry is valued at Sh260 million per year. According to Dr Ekesi, Kenya has been grappling with the problem of the mango fruit fly since 2003 when the pest reportedly came along with imported commodities from Sri Lanka. It has since become the single biggest threat to the mango and avocado sub-sectors in the country. “Presence of any trace of the mango fruit fly can lead to the destruction of an entire consignment at the exporters’ costs,” Dr Ekesi said, adding that the pest is also found in 28 other African countries. He said Kenya has since 2008 been losing $2 million (Sh180 million) annually for not exporting avocados to just a single market. “When they fly found its way into Kenya, there was no accompanying natural enemy to contain its multiplication as happens in Sri Lanka,” Dr Ekesi said.

In Sri Lanka, there are two types of insects that feed on the eggs and larvae of the mango fruit fly, keeping the level of damage at a manageable level, says the scientist. However, earlier efforts to import the two insects from Sri Lanka were not successful due to hurdles in exchange of biodiversity such as what Kenya was to offer in return, Dr Ekesi said. This took Icipe scientists to Hawaii in US, which first experienced the mango fruit fly problem in 1940s and imported natural enemies from Asia that they today use to contain the menace. The wasp only needs to be introduced once after, which it breeds and increase its population, so long as they are not killed by pesticides. The wasp was introduced in Kilifi and Malindi last month after trials were conducted in Magadi. Used together with other methods, the pest control will achieve over 90 per cent results, Mr Ekesi said.

Kenya Technical Standing Committee on Import and Export of biological material has already approved the introduction of the insects for commercial use, says Ekesi. After North Coast, the insects will be introduced in South Coast and Eastern province. The trials have established that the pest is effective in controlling mango fruit fry and it does harm other useful organisms, Ekesi said. The Icipe project, which is funded by GIZ of Germany and Biovision, a Swiss Ngo to a tune of 1.5 million euros covers Tanzania, Uganda, Benin, Cameroon and Senegal, Mr Ekesi said.
Market analysts see this development as a major breakthrough for a sector that has not been able to generate sustainable revenues to farmers due to marketing challenges. Projects of value addition have already been started in Hola, where the Coast Development Authority is constructing the first major mango processing plant.
From the survey findings carried out by Institution Development and Management (IDM) Services recently on mango sub sector in the Coast Region, it supports over 80,000 farm families. Information from the survey shows that the population of trees stands over 1.3 million.

Taking all products into consideration, the value of the mango sub-sector at the farm gate level is estimated to be Sh2.6 billion annually, the study said. Dynamics in the mango sub-sector show that there is a general rise in the population of trees exemplified by the number of new entrants in mango farming and the number of trees in the 0 - 3 years category, 178,391, representing 13.3 per cent of the total population. “ It is also evident that the mango sub sector has the potential to drive a substantial proportion of the agricultural economy in the Coast region as 78 per cent of all the trees fall in the productive category,” Gachanja Githende a managing partner of IDM.

Business Daily Africa

Push-pull: An affordable solution to costly pests

by Keya Acharya

The International Centre for Plant Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE), based at Mbita, on the Kenyan shores of the world’s second-largest freshwater body, is advocating "push-pull cultivation" as the answer to feeding future generations in Africa.

Up to 30,000 small farmers in East Africa, mostly in Kenya, have adopted this natural method of controlling pests and weeds in maize, the staple crop.

Push-pull cultivation intersperses the desmodium plant with maize in a plot, and plants napier grass as a border on all sides.

The desmodium repels, or pushes, the stem borer - a major pest - from the maize, and controls the dominant weed, striga; the napier grass attracts, or pulls, the borer towards it.

Approximately 25,375,000 hectares in sub-Saharan Africa are under maize cultivation, of which 6,122,000 ha are affected by the parasitic striga weed which strangles the maize plant.

East Africa loses US$7 billion worth of maize worth of maize due to striga and around $5-6 billion from the cereal parasite stem-borer insect, according to ICIPE.

The chemical-free system against them was developed by ICIPE scientists in collaboration with Rothamsted Research in the United Kingdom, the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute and various national partners, with funding from Kilimo Trust (East Africa), Gatsby Foundation (UK) and Biovision (Switzerland).

While farmers may opt to use fertiliser on a push-pull field, desmodium both retains moisture in the soil and fixes its nitrogen content at the rate of 110 kilogrammes per hectare per year.

The plant remains in the field after the maize is harvested, and is simply trimmed back to allow new maize to be planted.

"This is the answer to Africa’s food security," says Dr. Zeyaur Khan, principal scientist developing the push-pull project at ICIPE. "This will provide the magic number of $2 and over in Africa."

Khan says farmers in Africa will stop migrating to cities in search of incomes if they can earn more than $2 a day in their fields. He says the production of maize by farmers using the method has gone up from less than one tonne per hectare previously to 3.5 tonnes per ha, an increase that ensures year-long food for smallholder family.

Both desmodium and napier are fodder grasses that also help cattle and milk production, besides giving extra income through the sale of its seeds.

At Ebukanga village near Mbita, 45 year old Agnes Mbuvi says her production of maize on her 50 by 40 metre plot has gone up from half a bag (45 kilos) to a remarkable 6 bags (540 kilos) of maize per harvest. "I have enough milk throughout the year, enough food, the soil is easy. I am happy," she says.

Mbuvi, a widow, also adds that the extra income from the sale of surplus maize and milk has helped her educate her children.

Not far away, 50 year-old Elfas Ameyo, a part-time plumber, says his even smaller "push-pull" plot now gives him 2 bags (180 kg) of maize, instead of the one ‘debe’ (16 kg tin) he would get previously.

"School education helps in changing the minds of people," he says, explaining why his neighbor has not yet adopted the system in spite of seeing Ameyo’s huge increase in yield.

"We don’t need much money, we need appropriate technology," says Khan, who is critical of multinational seed and fertiliser agencies and international donors supporting the giving of seed and chemical fertilizers to farmers in Africa.

ICIPE is now testing the efficacy of the push-pull method in rice cultivation, and against the cotton bollworm, both features that bode good news for millions of Asia’s small farmers.

In the context of climate change, ICIPE is encouraging farmers to plant cotton as a second crop in addition to a food crop. The roots of the cotton plant also produce chemical flavinoids and isoflavinoids, similar to the desmodium root, that help kill the striga weed.

The napier grass however, has developed a disease, called ‘napier stunt’ that harms its growth and slowly kills the plant. Research is now on at ICIPE with an indigenous species of napier that is resistant to stunt.

"Ten years ago, this disease was not found in napier," says Khan. "We now find it is a phytoplasm bacterium, passed on through an insect, the leaf-hopper, to the napier grass, and came from grass. This is the danger for the future," says Khan.

Meanwhile, however, the push-pull system of agriculture also offers a system of mitigation to climate change by its moisture-retention and ability to survive droughts.

IPS

New pest control information platform for East African farmers

Farmers in Eastern Africa can now, at the click of a button, have free access to the most recent, scientifically-based and region specific information on sustainable methods for the prevention and control of pests and vectors that are harmful to humans, animals and plants.

The development comes as a result of an internet platform, www.infonet-biovision.org, launchedby ICIPE and the Swiss-based BioVision Foundation with funding from the Principality of Liechtenstein, through its government development agency.

The site, explained BioVision Chief Executive Officer, Andreas Schriber, is different from search engines because it is designed with farmers, and trainers of farmers in mind. “Imagine a tomato farmer whose crop is invested by a disease. In order to protect the plants, he needs to identify the disease first. If he types in “tomato diseases” in one of the general search engines available on the world wide web (www), the result might be millions of pages. Most of them will be characterised by heavy scientific jargon, and the farmer will have a difficult time sieving through all of them,” he says.

Schriber notes that in contrast, www.infonet-biovision.org, has collated all the various possible diseases of tomatoes in the region, and their visual symptoms, either through photographs or illustrations. “All the farmer will have to do is identify the picture that most closely represents the damage on his crop, and he will be guided to carefully selected and edited methods, tips and strategies, on how to go the problem.”

This information, emphasises ICIPE Director General, Prof Christian Borgemeister, is scientifically accurate, having been compiled by local and international experts in collaboration with a network of partner organizations. More importantly, it incorporates farmers’ perspective.

Currently, explains project leader Monique Hunziker the site incorporates information on over 40 major pests from those that affect the production in the farms, such as aphids, to those that damage the crop while in storage. This material has taken into consideration more than 35 major crops, vegetables and fruits grown in East Africa.

“This is a starting point that we are building-up on, adding more content on a daily basis. We have, for instance, already started to put together information on soil and water conservation, natural enemies, on medicinal plants, the processing and preservation of fruits and vegetables and on organic farming and plant nutrition,” says Schriber.

In addition, the plan is to integrate information on simple and environmentally safe technologies and approaches to generate incomes, and more information on human health (integrated malaria control) and animal health (i.e. animal keeping, tsetse, tick control) and many more issues.

ICIPE and BioVision are aware that for farmers to take advantage of this initiative, they must at least have access to a computer, and the ability to use it. Initial field tests, however, show that even for beginners with no computer knowledge whatsoever, it takes as little as 20 minutes to get acquainted with the platform.

For farmers who have computers but no Internet access there is an off-line version of Infonet available, downloadable immediately from the website or available on Compact Discs or USB flash sticks.

Innovations Report

Artemisia anti-malarial may grow better in potassium-poor soil : study

A new study suggests that Artemisia annua, a plant from which an anti-malarial is extracted, may yield more of its key medicinal compound when grown in potassium-deficient soils. The study, published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, found that growing Artemisia in acidic soils with a mild potassium deficiency could increase the amount of the antimalarial compound, artemisinin, by 20 per cent.

The plant is the only natural source of artemisinin. The suggestion that artemisia can grow successfully in poor soils with little fertiliser, is of particular potential for Africa where fertilisers are typically two to six times more expensive than in Europe, North America or Asia.

In 2001, the World Health Organisation (WHO) 2001 recommended the administration of artemisinin-based combination therapy (ACT) antimalarial drugs to developing countries where resistance had been developed to existing drugs. As a result, many African countries have adopted ACT as the first-or-second line anti-malarial where chloroquine is no longer effective.

This recommendation caused the demand for artemisinin to increase and led to supply shortages in 2004. To meet this demand, drug companies have expanded the artemisia cultivated area from 200 to approximately 1,600 hectares in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. East African Botanicals (EAB) Limited grows the raw material for artimisinin, that it sells to drug companies. Many other countries have also embarked on artemisia growing programmes.

However, EAB says harvests have shown a wide variability, something the firm attributed to factors such as climate, farm management, agronomic factors, fertilisers, weeding, and timing of planting and harvesting.

But Dr Ahmed Hassanali, a visiting scientist at ICIPE, an insect research station in Kenya, warned of the danger of singling out one aspect of artemesia's performance, as done in the US research.He said that plants have the ability to develop a high level of certain compounds under certain stress conditions, like potassium deficiency, but this might not reflect the long-term reaction.

Business Daily

African scientists hold key to beetle invasion of US, EU hives

Scientists from the International Centre of Insect Physiology & Ecology (ICIPE) in Kenya, are working with colleagues from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) to eradicate a beetle invasion that is endangering the $200 million-worth honey industry in the US.

The beetle invasion which scientists have dubbed 'Collapse Colony Disorder,' was described by media reports having triggered an exodus of millions of honeybees from hives in Europe and the US, causing losses estimated at billions of dollars.

The small hive beetle,Aethina tumida, is described as an invasive organism indigenous to sub-Saharan Africa, where it is effectively dealt with by African honeybees.

The scientists will explore the possibilities of equipping the European honeybees with the ability to fight off the small hive beetle. "We have published a paper detailing the relationship between the two, and are in the process of preparing a research proposal for possible funding," said Dr. Baldwyn Torto, Icipe's head of behavioural and chemical ecology.

He says Icipe is confident that the research aimed at understanding the beetle will prove more important than the adoption of a quick chemical-based option of eradicating the problematic beetle in the US and Europe.

Outbreaks of the Collapse Colony Disorder were first reported in the US in November 2006. The exodus has since spread to 24 US states, as well as to Greece, Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain. Beekeepers have been losing from 30-90 per cent of their bees. The Economist magazine of April 26 called the phenomenon a "mystery," baffling researchers and beekeepers alike. "What appear to be normal healthy adults suddenly disappear within two days, leaving their queen, food stores and young." Scientists estimate that each colony has between 40,000 and 60,000 bees.

Initially, it was suspected that the exodus of bees from hives in the US and Europe had something to do with a failure in the bees' immune system. Other scientists sought answers in the bees' genetic make up, with still others interestingly linking it to the widespread use of mobile phones. But now scientists say that the problematic relationship between the small hive beetle and the European honeybee springs from the fact that the latter is not equipped to handle the beetle, unlike its African cousin.

ICIPE and USDA have already published a research paper that shows that the small hive beetle might be responsible for the mass exodus of the European honeybees. Published in PNAS, a journal of the US National Academy of Science on May 4, the article reports that the small hive beetle does not affect African honeybees because the latter have "evolved effective methods to mitigate beetle infestation."

It seems that the African honeybee does this through a number of behavioural methods, including removing the beetle's eggs from honeycombs as it cleans up the hive, or "imprisoning" the invading beetles in the hives' cracks and crevices.

Dr. Torto said that African bees mainly bank on their aggressiveness to accomplish this. But the European honeybee is not as lucky. As a result, each time the beetle, which has a special appetite for the pollen that bees collect and store in hives, infests a hive in the US, it introduces a fungus that promotes the development of yeast, causing the bees to vacate the hive.

"Beetles are scavengers and their job is to clean up. In the case of the small hive beetle, it uses a fungus to digest pollen. This fungus causes fermentation, in effect causing a change of the chemistry in the hives. Since bees are very sensitive to such variations, they eventually abandon the hives," said Torto.

Relying on this information, ICIPE and USDA scientists now intend to go further and establish how this unique trait in African honeybees can be used to deal with the Collapse Colony Disorder. According to Torto, the research will also enable Kenya and other African countries to be prepared in the unlikely event that the problem hits Africa.

East African

East African small-scale cereal farmers adopt new production techniques

The Swiss-based BioVision, Kilimo Trust Uganda and the Nairobi-headquartered ICIPE (African Insect Science for Food and Health) have recently achieved a major milestone towards maximising maize and sorghum production, while improving the health and income of small-scale farmers in East Africa.

This follows the collaboration of these organisations towards the development of a curriculum for Farmers Field Schools on the ICIPE's "push-pull" technology, which simultaneously combats stem-borer moths, striga weeds, and poor soil fertility.

Stemborers and striga together can, if not controlled, lead to as much as 100% yield losses of maize. As a result, although maize is the most important staple food in sub Saharan Africa, the region's average per hectare yield of this cereal is the lowest in the world, and far below the population's needs. Maize harvests that would be saved by controlling these two pests could feed an additional 27 million people in SSA. Unfortunately, small-scale farmers who contribute more than 80% of the continent's maize production often lack the money to buy synthetic pesticides, which are in any case not only harmful to the environment, but usually ineffective as well.

"Push-pull" is the result of a 10-year quest by Rothamsted Research, United Kingdom in collaboration with ICIPE, and Kenya's ministry of agriculture, to provide such farmers with environmentally-friendly and sustainable methods to control these two pests. The strategy uses a novel combination of forage plants which, when inter cropped with cereals, act as both a trap and a repellent for stem-borers and striga. The two plants so far employed by ICIPE are Napier grass, which attracts the moths, and desmodium, which produces semio-chemicals that repel stem-borers. Napier, planted as a border around the main crop, "pulls" them away from the cereal and leaving it protected. Desmodium is planted within the rows of maize or sorghum to "push" the pests away. In addition, the roots of desmodium generate several isoflavones, some of which inhibit the germination, while others prevent the attachment of striga seeds to the root of the cereal.

Currently, more than 7000 farmers in 19 districts in Kenya and in five districts in Uganda are practising push-pull, while training demonstrations have started in Tanzania. In these sites, "push-pull" has increased maize yields by an average of 25% in areas where only stem-borers are present, and by more than 80% where both stem-borers and striga are a problem. In addition, it has contributed to the augmentation of livestock production, especially on small farms where pressure on land is high, since both napier grass and desmodium provide quality fodder for livestock. The the technology also increases soil fertility as desmodium has nitrogen-fixing and moisture retention qualities.

Innovations Report