Harsh dry weath­er con­di­tions are trig­ger­ing an in­crease in the red palm mite which has dev­as­tat­ed 80 per cent of co­conut es­tates in T&T.

Sev­en years af­ter In­dia’s top bi­o­log­i­cal ex­pert Dr Av­varu Su­jatha made at­tempts to fight the red palm mite, Ce­dros co­conut grow­ers say their es­tates con­tin­ue to of­fer low yields be­cause of the spread of the dev­as­tat­ing preda­tor.

The pro­duce is so min­i­mal that small­er es­tate own­ers are us­ing the co­conuts main­ly for oil pro­duc­tion and bot­tled co­conut wa­ter. A few sup­ply grat­ed co­conut to bak­eries for the pro­duc­tion of pas­tries.

Dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia, co­conut pro­duc­er Ivor Al­fred said his 12-acre es­tate has been de­stroyed by the mite.

“A few years ago they brought ex­perts from In­di­an and African to fight this red palm mite. We had hope that the es­tates could be re­vived but our trees are con­tin­u­ing to die,” Al­fred said. He added that two years ago, he at­tempt­ed to re­plant the trees, some of which were al­most 100 years old.

“It made no sense be­cause the new trees shriv­elled up and died,” Al­fred said. He said he has now start­ed to do in­ter-crop­ping.

“I use the es­tate to plant paw­paw, pump­kins and figs. I sell what­ev­er lit­tle I get to the co­conut oil pro­duc­ers,” he said.

There are about 10 co­conut oil pro­duc­ers in the south­west­ern penin­su­la among them Roopah Ma­haraj and her daugh­ter Nir­mala. Ma­haraj said the mite has wreaked hav­oc on co­conut pro­duc­tion.

Man­ick Joseph who works in the pro­duc­tion of oil said the co­conut in­dus­try once pow­ered the econ­o­my in the south­west­ern penin­su­la. He said since the de­struc­tion of the es­tates, some peo­ple mi­grat­ed while oth­ers went in­to the fish­ing in­dus­try.

In an in­ter­view, lo­cal gov­ern­ment coun­cil­lor for Ce­dros Shankar Teelucks­ingh said the sev­er­al co­conut es­tate own­ers in the penin­su­la were now trans­form­ing their once arable lands in­to hous­ing de­vel­op­ments. He said while co­conut was a lu­cra­tive crop, it was dy­ing in Ce­dros, main­ly be­cause of the mite.

“We need a com­plete up­grade of the in­dus­try. The trees which are over 100-years-old need to be ploughed down and re­plant­ed.

“The trees were sup­posed to be re­placed with fresh stock. Stud­ies were done by Cariri (Caribbean In­dus­tri­al Re­search In­sti­tute) and biotech­nol­o­gy was utilised to curb the red palm mite. How­ev­er, the trees were not re­plant­ed as promised by the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture,” Teelucks­ingh said.

“We are still wait­ing for the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture to re­ha­bil­i­tate the in­dus­try. Teelucks­ingh said some co­conuts are sold be­tween $1.50 to $5 de­pend­ing on the size. He said in ar­eas out­side of the coast, the mite was caus­ing de­struc­tion.

At Bun­see Trace, Pe­nal, an­oth­er farmer Raithraj Sook­nanan said he al­so plant­ed co­conuts but the trees have all died be­cause of the red palm mite.

“The trees start to dry from the top and we don’t get any yield at all,” Sook­nanan said.

Slow process to get for­eign

plant ma­te­r­i­al—Ramb­harat

Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Clarence Ramb­harat said there were some de­lays in get­ting the co­conut stocks from abroad.

“We have co­conut cul­ti­va­tions all over the coun­try. The main is­sue is the slow pace of the ef­forts to im­port plant­i­ng ma­te­r­i­al from Brazil and Mex­i­co. New and more re­sis­tant va­ri­eties are what our farm­ers need,” he said.

He not­ed that the de­struc­tion of the co­conut trees may be dri­ven by the eco­nom­ics of hous­es be­ing a bet­ter re­turn on in­vest­ment.

Asked why there was a de­lay in get­ting the stock, Ramb­harat said, “Pest Risk As­sess­ments by the ex­porter and im­porter and in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty is­sues- the sell­er re­tains in­tel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty rights which makes it dif­fi­cult for us to re­pro­duce and share plant­i­ng ma­te­r­i­al.”

Asked what plans the Gov­ern­ment had for the re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion of the co­conut in­dus­try and whether the mite could be erad­i­cat­ed, Ramb­harat said, “We can­not erad­i­cate red palm mite. We can re­duce the im­pact. I have fo­cused on mak­ing im­port­ed plant­ed ma­te­r­i­al avail­able. The in­cen­tives for agri­cul­ture are al­ready in place.”

He added that the shift from co­conut to hous­ing has been hap­pen­ing for sev­er­al years now.

About the red palm mite

The red palm mite is a pest of the co­conut and oth­er palms in In­dia and many oth­er Asian coun­tries. The first West­ern He­mi­sphere re­port of red palm mite was from Mar­tinique in 2004 and it quick­ly spread to many oth­er Caribbean coun­tries, in­clud­ing T&T in 2006. Ini­tial symp­toms are dis­col­ora­tion of the leaves, while ad­vanced symp­toms in­clude yield loss.

The mite has dev­as­tat­ed 80 per cent of the co­conut in­dus­try in coastal com­mu­ni­ties of Ce­dros, Ica­cos and Man­zanil­la.

Why bi­o­log­i­cal con­trols did not work?

In a re­sponse to an email from Guardian Me­dia, the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture agreed that harsh dry weath­er con­di­tions could in­crease the mite pop­u­la­tion. In a state­ment, the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture said a preda­to­ry mite A. lar­goen­sis (Acari: phy­to­sei­idae) was iden­ti­fied as a main in­dige­nous nat­ur­al en­e­my of the red palm mite.

“Sur­veys for nat­ur­al en­e­mies con­duct­ed in T&T de­tect­ed Am­bl­y­seius lar­goen­sis as the pri­ma­ry preda­tor in all the ge­o­graph­i­cal ar­eas. Dr Av­varu Su­jatha (In­di­an tech­ni­cal ex­pert) was con­tract­ed to lead re­search ac­tiv­i­ties in ad­dress­ing this mite prob­lem. Dur­ing her tenure at the Min­istry, Dr Su­jatha con­duct­ed field, green­house and lab­o­ra­to­ry stud­ies through­out T&T,” the Min­istry said.

“Re­sults from such stud­ies re­port­ed that red palm mite pop­u­la­tions were high­er in coastal co­conut es­tates when com­pared to in­land es­tates. Da­ta al­so showed an in­crease in red palm mite pop­u­la­tions dur­ing the dry sea­son and low­er pop­u­la­tions dur­ing the rainy sea­son. This coun­try is cur­rent­ly ex­pe­ri­enc­ing harsh dry sea­son con­di­tions and it is ex­pect­ed that an in­crease in red palm mite pop­u­la­tions may oc­cur,” the Min­istry added.

Dur­ing the con­duct of rou­tine sur­veil­lance ac­tiv­i­ties, the Min­istry said preda­tors were al­so ob­served, along with the pest, name­ly Am­bl­y­seius lar­goen­sis.

“The pres­ence of this preda­tor has al­so been re­port­ed to re­duce red palm mite pop­u­la­tions glob­al­ly. Since then, sev­er­al field stud­ies in­volv­ing the use of this preda­tor against red palm mite were con­duct­ed by the Re­search Di­vi­sion. Sur­veil­lance ac­tiv­i­ties are con­duct­ed rou­tine­ly to mon­i­tor pop­u­la­tion lev­els. An In­te­grat­ed Pest Man­age­ment ap­proach is rec­om­mend­ed,” the Min­istry said.

Farm­ers are now be­ing en­cour­aged to con­tact the Re­search Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture to di­ag­nose the symp­toms ob­served ac­cu­rate­ly since low yields may be due to a com­bi­na­tion of fac­tors in­clu­sive of in­sect pest, dis­eases and oth­er dis­or­ders.”