#Embu rice farmers

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How Portable Mills Are Making Rice Milling Accessible in Embu, Meru, and Tharaka Nithi

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[karingudino]

Three natural enemies found to ‘beat fall armyworm’

[NAIROBI] Maize farmers throughout Africa may quickly discover aid from the devastation attributable to fall armyworm (FAW) following encouraging outcomes from using indigenous pure enemies to battle the pest.

The UN Meals and Agriculture Group (FAO) estimates that fall armyworm causes Africa to lose as much as 18 million tonnes of maize yearly, representing an financial lack of as a lot as US$4.6 billion.

Researchers on the Worldwide Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE) have recognized three native parasitoids or insect species whose larvae stay as parasites that ultimately kill the hosts. The scientists noticed promising outcomes after mass releasing them into maize farms with fall armyworm in Kenya.

“The truth that the pure enemies are indigenous is advantageous as they are going to be tailored to the native environments.”

Lilian Gichuru, Alliance for a Inexperienced Revolution in Africa

“The preliminary post-release discipline assessments revealed that parasitism charges of FAW within the discipline elevated by 55 per cent, 50 per cent and 38 per cent, for Trichogramma chilonis, Telenomus remus and Cotesia icipe, respectively,” says icipe, in a press release revealed final month. “The launched parasitoids work synergistically to convey down the inhabitants of FAW by attacking totally different developmental phases (eggs and larvae) of the pest.”

Based on the assertion, over the past quarter of 2020, icipe researchers and nationwide companions in Kenya started releasing 140,000 every of T.  remus and T. chilonis wasps that parasitise FAW eggs and 5,000 C. icipe wasps that parasitise early larval phases of FAW. The sector actions had been carried out between December 2020 and February 2021 in 5 counties: Taita-Taveta, Machakos, Embu, Meru and Nyeri.

Sevgan Subramanian, principal scientist and chief of the environmental well being theme at icipe, tells SciDev.Internet that following the encouraging discipline experiment in Kenya, they’re planning for mass manufacturing and launch of the parasitoids in different African nations.

“Successfully conserving environment friendly indigenous pure enemies within the agroecosystem are among the many higher choices for the administration of a pest, as they’re already tailored to outlive within the prevailing ecological circumstances and successfully management the pest,” Subramanian says.

However Subramanian provides {that a} key constraint is the dearth of technical capability for replication of pure enemy manufacturing facility in numerous nations.

The caterpillars of fall armyworms feed on the leaves, stems and reproductive components of greater than 100 plant species reminiscent of maize, rice, sorghum and sugarcane, in addition to different crops, together with cabbage, beet, peanut and soybean, pasture grasses and millet, inflicting main injury to cultivated pants.

The present FAW management strategies based mostly on using artificial pesticides is detrimental to conservation of indigenous pure enemies, and has damaging health impact for famers, customers and the environment, he tells SciDev.Internet.

He urges maize farmers and agricultural policymakers to undertake sustainable FAW administration methods reminiscent of promotion of diversified maize cropping programs.

Roger Day, programme govt for Motion on Invasives on the Centre for Agriculture and Biosciences Worldwide (CABI, the parent organisation of SciDev.Internet), says {that a} key difficulty is what number of parasitoids should be launched to regulate the pest inhabitants.

“As an illustration, in trials in Brazil, there are reviews of releasing 100,000-200,000 bugs per hectare. So, the work reported by icipe seems to be small-scale or pilot releases. This is a vital first step,” he provides.

Mass rearing, distributing and releasing parasitoids on the proper time, Day explains, is just not as straightforward as distributing pesticides, and it may be expensive. If the price of management is greater than the worth of the decreased crop loss, it’s not price doing it.

He additionally provides that it’s nonetheless removed from clear whether or not such mass releases could be cost-effective in Africa.  And if three species of parasitoid are being launched without delay, that’s prone to make the method dearer.

Lilian Gichuru, affiliate programme officer on the Alliance for a Inexperienced Revolution in Africa, welcomes the encouraging findings in Kenya.

“The truth that the pure enemies are indigenous is advantageous as they are going to be tailored to the native environments to thrive and multiply and naturally management FAW,” she says.

Gichuru requires programmes to educate farming communities on these non-chemical management choices as a part of pest management actions, and present farmers that though pure enemies don’t provide fast “killing-effect”, they will suppress pest populations to manageable ranges.

This piece was produced by SciDev.Internet’s Sub-Saharan Africa English desk.

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source https://fikiss.net/three-natural-enemies-found-to-beat-fall-armyworm/ Three natural enemies found to ‘beat fall armyworm’ published first on https://fikiss.net/ from Karin Gudino https://karingudino.blogspot.com/2021/03/three-natural-enemies-found-to-beat.html

[drprunesquallor]

Twenty kilometres west of Embu the land is flat. It is perfect for growing rice. Rivers flowing south from the slopes of Mount Kenya provide plenty of water for irrigation. I prefer to cook the Pishori variety of rice, as it is thin-grained and fragrant, almost as good as Basmati rice. For small quantities, I buy the rice loose in the market. However, when buying sacks of rice to take to Nairobi, we call in at the Nice Rice Factory.

Farmers also grow sugar cane and vegetables in the rich, black cotton soil. At the entrance to the Nice Rice Factory, there was a kiosk selling crushed sugar cane juice, sometimes flavoured with beetroot, ginger and lemon juice. An advertising billboard extolled the medicinal virtues of the juice.

Four girls promoting the sale of cane juice were listening to music and chatting. They called me over to try a sample. Unsurprisingly, it was sickly sweet. The price of 500ml of the full strength cane juice was a very reasonable 100 Kenyan shillings. It was very popular with wasps. The girls would only agree to a photo if I bought a drink.

Other outlets dilute the juice by soaking partially crushed canes in water and squeezing them through the rollers again. They also add lemon juice to offset the sweetness.

Nice Rice Twenty kilometres west of Embu the land is flat. It is perfect for growing rice. Rivers flowing south from the slopes of Mount Kenya provide plenty of water for irrigation.