CABI Supports Project To Help Smallholder Farmers Fight The Sweet Potato Weevil In Caribbean
18 November 2024, Caribbean: CABI is supporting a project to help smallholder farmers fight the sweet potato weevil (SPW) in Antigua and Barbuda, Jamaica, and St Lucia using environmentally friendly biological control agents as part of an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) plan.
Dr Belinda Luke, Global Team Leader, PlantwisePlus, provided training with Dr Elizabeth Johnson, from the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), to manage the pest which can cause up to 80 percent losses in yield.
The scientists focused on how to find strains of the most effective native entomopathogenic fungi (EPF) in the Caribbean islands for development and use as a biopesticide to augment biological control of sweet potato weevil (Cylas puncticollis).
Delivered training in sweet potato trapping, culturing and selection
Dr Luke and Dr Johnson delivered training in sweet potato trapping, culturing and selection of infected SPW for shipping to CABI’s laboratories in the UK for further analysis including identification.
The second phase later in the year will return the pure identified isolates of EPF from the SPW collected in the Caribbean. There will be further training in 2025, on conducting bioassays on the returned EPFs and selection of the most effective EPF isolates for development into biopesticides for the control of the SPW.
The work was conducted as part of the project ‘Next generation sweet potato production on the Caribbean’ which is funded by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) through the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (ITPGRFA).
Dr Luke said, “The sweet potato weevil is the most destructive pest of the sweet potato crop in Antigua and Barbuda and across the Caribbean and highlights the urgent need for effective sustainable measures to protect crops to safeguard livelihoods and food security.
“In this project, IPM will be used to control pests in an environmentally friendly approach by isolating fungi from sweet potato weevils and soil samples and developing them into biopesticides.”
Empowering farmers to increase yields and diversify product offerings
The project marks a significant step forward, empowering farmers to increase sweet potato yields and diversify product offerings, such as mash, fries, wedges, animal feed, and fresh roots, targeting both local and international markets.
SPW is an ant-like insect about one-fourth of an inch long, which feeds on leaves and stems, but prefers the sweet potato roots. Crop damage is from feeding of young larvae or grubs that hatch from eggs laid in the sweet potato stems and roots.
After hatching, the larvae begin to tunnel into the roots and these tunnels increase in size as the grubs grow. This damage to the root cause bitter tasting toxic terpenoids to be produced resulting in the sweet potatoes being unfit for consumption.
Cutting and throwing away root parts with tunnels and larvae
Cutting and throwing away root parts with tunnels and larvae is a common practice in the Caribbean.
However, this practice results in more sweet potato weevils, as the tossed living larvae become adults that seek a new crop in which to lay eggs for their larvae to infect and damage.
A team from the Ministry of Agriculture – supported by IICA – has already placed over 30 traps on 12 farms across several farming districts in Antigua.
The collection of the weevils will be conducted by the Plant Protection Department periodically, every 7-10 days over a 4-to-6-week period. At the Dunbar’s Analytical Laboratory, the weevils will be prepared, incubated and shipped to the UK before the end of the year.
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