RAD­HI­CA DE SIL­VA

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Farm­ers are re­port­ing loss­es of crops and live­stock as high as 30 to 35 per cent as a re­sult of the heat spell, says Daryl Ram­per­sad, Pres­i­dent of the Agri­cul­tur­al So­ci­ety.

“In some ar­eas such as Paramin, Lopinot, Blan­chisseuse, where they plant on the hill­sides, loss­es are even high­er,” he said.

Ram­per­sad un­der­scored the ur­gent need for farm­ers to adopt wa­ter-ef­fi­cient ir­ri­ga­tion sys­tems and con­struct above-ground pens to safe­guard their live­stock. He said if the on­go­ing heat­wave is of­fi­cial­ly clas­si­fied as a nat­ur­al dis­as­ter, af­fect­ed farm­ers might be en­ti­tled to com­pen­sa­tion.

Pro­fes­sor of Biotech­nol­o­gy and Plant Mi­cro­bi­ol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), Pro­fes­sor Ja­yaraj Ja­yara­man said the ap­pli­ca­tion of bio-stim­u­lants, prefer­ably those de­rived from sea­weed ex­tracts, can sig­nif­i­cant­ly mit­i­gate the dam­age caused by the on­go­ing heat­wave. 

“At this point, I’ll ad­vise farm­ers to go to the agro shops and look for sea­weed ex­tract-based bios­tim­u­lants and if it’s the colour of Co­ca-Co­la and smells fishy, it is good to use on plants,” he said.

How­ev­er, he warned: “Stay away from chem­i­cal fer­til­iz­ers and pes­ti­cides while it is so hot be­cause this will burn the plants. If you have to ap­ply pes­ti­cides do it late evenings. If pos­si­ble, spray wa­ter over the plants.”

Pro­fes­sor Ja­yara­man said UWI is in the fi­nal stages of re­search and is plan­ning to in­tro­duce a line of bi­o­log­i­cal stim­u­lants next year, util­is­ing the sar­gas­sum sea­weed which wash­es ashore an­nu­al­ly.

“When ap­plied, ex­tracts from three lo­cal sea­weeds pro­duced in­cred­i­ble growth and dis­ease re­sis­tance, far bet­ter re­sults than that of com­mer­cial­ly avail­able bios­tim­u­lant prod­ucts,” he said.

Sam­ples have been dis­trib­uted to farm­ers for test­ing and have been used on a wide va­ri­ety of short crops.

Pro­fes­sor Adesh Ram­sub­hag, for­mer Head of the Life Sci­ence De­part­ment at UWI said the lo­cal or­gan­ic plant bios­tim­u­lant be­ing de­vel­oped from sea­weed ex­tract to boost plant im­mu­ni­ty and re­sis­tance to stress will be ready for com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion with­in the next year.

He said farm­ers should be aware of the ef­fects of heat on crops and fol­low tips to re­cov­er and pro­tect plants un­der heat stress.

Agron­o­mist Akanath Singh said: “I think this is the first time in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s his­to­ry that farm­ers are los­ing crops from ex­treme heat in­stead of flood­ing in the rainy sea­son. A lot of farm­ers de­pend on the rain to wa­ter their crops in the rainy sea­son. They are now wor­ried about this ex­treme heat.

“Many farm­ers pump wa­ter from ponds and near­by rivers to wa­ter their crops, now it’s dry­ing up with the re­cent ex­treme heat. If some­thing isn’t done now we will all have to brace for high­er food prices soon.”

Singh, who man­ages Plant Di­ag­nos­tics Clin­ic, said he has re­ceived nu­mer­ous re­ports of plants wilt­ing, main­ly hy­dro­pon­ics leafy crops such as let­tuce, patchoi and kale.

“Sweet pep­per farm­ers need to mon­i­tor for sun scald on their pep­pers as it is very com­mon dur­ing ex­treme heat,” he said.