Sugarcane Under Siege: Yellow Aphid Infestation and Farmer Awareness in Tanzania | InformativeBD

Ally A. Shabani,  Pavithran Venkataramana, and Ernest R. Mbega,  from the institute of Tanzania.  wrote a Research article about, Sugarcane Under Siege: Yellow Aphid Infestation and Farmer Awareness in Tanzania. entitled, Infestation Status and Farmers’ Knowledge on Yellow Sugarcane Aphid (Sipha flava) in Tanzania. This research paper published by the International Journal of Biosciences | IJB. an open access scholarly research journal on Biosciences. under the affiliation of the International Network For Natural Sciences| INNSpub. an open access multidisciplinary research journal publisher.

Abstract

A survey was conducted to determine the infestation status of Yellow Sugarcane Aphid (YSA) from June to August 2019 in Manyara, Kilombero and TPC plantations and small scale farms in central and northern Tanzania. All farmers interviewed confirmed the occurrence of Yellow Sugarcane aphid in their farms and field survey data indicated the high level of incidence both in sugarcane plantations (79.07%) and small-scale farms (88.2%) and the yield loss due to Yellow Sugarcane aphid was estimated to be 8.9 tons/ha. There was no difference in the level of infestation between plantations and small-scale farms in Manyara (F = 1.007, P ˃ 0.05) and Morogoro (F = 1.676, P ˃ 0.05). Less than half of all interviewed farmers (39%) reported using chemical pesticides against Yellow sugarcane aphid while more than half (61%) did not use any kind of management approach in controlling Yellow sugarcane aphid. We recommend more monitoring exercises and information gathering about Yellow sugarcane aphid to be undertaken to properly establish the status of this pest all over the country.

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Introduction

Sugarcane (Saccharum spp.) is an important cash crop in terms of sugar and ethanol production worldwide (Verheye, 2009; Friedrich et al., 2010; Mary and Sujata, 2016). In Tanzania, the sugar industry is considered one of the largest agroeconomic sectors which contributes to about 35% of the growth in output of the food manufacturing sector (Nkonya and Barreiro-Hurle, 2012). Sugarcane cultivation in Tanzania is concentrated in three regions, Morogoro, Kilimanjaro and Kagera (Tarimo and Takamura, 1998) where there are large plantations as well as small-scale sugarcane farmers under the out-grower schemes ( Rabobank, 2013; Sulle, 2017). Average annual cane production is about 2.7 million tonnes which contribute about 12.4 billion Tanzanian Shillings (TZS) to the Government’s revenue through sugar-related activities (FAO,2012) and provides the farmers with total earning of more than TZS 45 billion (Sulle, 2017)

However, sugarcane cultivation is faced with many challenges. Prevalence of pests and diseases has been identified as one of the challenges facing sugarcane production, which result in a considerable loss in term of sugarcane yield, quality and recovery (Hussnain et al., 1997). Throughout the world, about 1500 species of insects have been identified to feed on sugarcane such as stem bores, shoot borers, mealy bugs, scale insects, white grubs and aphids (Ahad et al., 2016). For example, it was reported in India that pests and diseases contribute to about 20% and 19% decline in cane production, respectively (Directorate of Sugarcane Development, 2013).

Stem borers and Root borers are considered the major pests of sugarcane (Ahad et al., 2016). However, various species of aphids have also been identified to cause considerable damage to sugarcane plants such as Sugarcane aphid, Melaniphis sacchari, Yellow sugarcane aphid, Sipha flava (White et al., 2001; Akbar et al., 2010) and Sugarcane wooly aphids, Ceratovacuna lanigera (Srikanth et al., 2008). Yellow sugarcane aphid (YSA), Sipha flava (Forbes) is thought to have originated from temperate and subtropical regions of North America, but it has also been reported in central and South America (Regan, 1994). In Africa, the first occurrence was reported in Morocco in 2006 (Abdelmajid, 2008), then in the South African sugarcane industry in 2013 (Way et al., 2014) and recently in Kenya in 2016 (KARLO-SRI, 2018). It has been considered as a common pest to various economic important crops such as sorghum and sugarcane (Nuessly, 2014), and also they have been found on several host plants including corn, rice, wheat, barley, oat (Nuessly, 2014; Way et al., 2014).

The infestation of YSA has been reported to cause significant damage to sugarcane plants resulting to yield loss (Hall, 2001). Through their way of feeding, YSA cause leaf chlorosis and necrosis (Hall and Bennett, 1994), reduced tillering, premature leaves, stalk and whole plant senescence (Hall, 2001) and even death of plants in case of severe infestation (Cherry et al., 2015), which altogether may contribute to yield reduction up to about 19% (Hall, 2001). Apart from the damage caused by feeding, YSA has also been reported to spread sugarcane mosaic potyvirus (Blackman and Eastop, 2000).

Despite several reports on YSA in various countries, little is known about YSA infestation status in Tanzania and how it affects sugarcane cultivation. Therefore, this paper reports on the infestation of YSA in Sugarcane Estates and Small scale farms and knowledge of farmers on the pest and management.

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Article source : Infestation Status and Farmers’ Knowledge on Yellow Sugarcane Aphid (Sipha flava) in Tanzania