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Helping coffee farmers to fight pests
What you need to know:
- According to Uganda Coffee Development Authority (Robusta Coffee Handbook) Coffee Wilt Disease (CWD) is the biggest biological threat to coffee production in Uganda and its occurrence can be sporadic leading to epidemics.
Coffee farmers are in constant battle against pests and diseases. If neglected the diseases may lead to a reduced growth, decline in quality, lower yield, and possible death of the coffee plants.
In Robusta coffee growing areas the most common diseases include Coffee Leaf Rust, Red Blister Disease, Coffee Wilt Disease, and a nuisance pest, the Black Coffee Twig Borer and a whole range of other pests.
Julius Peter Ahagaana, western Uganda regional agronomist at Rainbow Agro-sciences Company Limited says the pests and diseases account for 38 percent of losses to farmers.
Remedy
Ahagaana told Seeds of Gold, “I work closely with the Ministry of Agriculture’s Crop Protection Unit and the District Coffee Boards to help farmers in the region protect their gardens against the pests. In most cases the diseases and pest attacks are linked to agronomical malpractices and when the farmers are enlightened about the predisposing factors often their gardens improve. I meet them individually or in groups and we discuss possible solutions that often involve biological control, agricultural hygiene, and application of pesticides.”
Pesticides
His job is particularly important given the fact that coffee is food and must be carefully handled especially with regard to pesticide usage by farmers. He provides them with information and guidance about their proper usage.
“To assist farmers who cannot read the prescriptions, we have packets sizes that may be put into a spray pump as the recommended dosage and other packet sizes for mixing a two-hundred-litre-drum of water as the prescribed dosage,” he says.
Training farmers
However some of the coffee diseases have no chemical control remedy and he tells them what to do. Seeds of Gold caught up with him on one of his field days at the coffee plantation of Frank Takaya of Kannabukuliro Village, Kabonera Sub-county, Masaka District last Saturday.
He was teaching them about the importance of stumping and pruning among other practices.
According to Uganda Coffee Development Authority (Robusta Coffee Handbook) Coffee Wilt Disease (CWD) is the biggest biological threat to coffee production in Uganda and its occurrence can be sporadic leading to epidemics.
Entire coffee plantations have been wiped out by the disease and the general practice among most farmers in traditional Robusta coffee growing areas is to uproot diseased plants and to replace them with CWD resistant varieties obtained from approved Robusta coffee nurseries. Coffee planting is therefore an almost endless activity in the region.
How diseases spread
Ahagaana blames the spread of CWD disease on mindless usage of sharp tools by farmers. “A panga or any other sharp tool used to work on a diseased plant should not be immediately used to work on a healthy plant without disinfecting it,” he says. “In some cases even picking coffee berries from a diseased plant and going ahead to pick coffee from a healthy plant can cause infection because of the sap carried on the farmers’ fingers.”
He also says that the birds that keep flying from one coffee tree to another picking leaves or ripe berries spread the disease. It is a soil born disease which may also be spread by water and wind getting into the plant through cracks, or bruises on the main stem and the root system.
Human activities such as movement of the dead branches in the garden to be used as firewood and using coffee husks of infected berries as mulch are another way of spreading the disease.
Ahagaana’s advice is burning the dead branches right in the place where they died. He also says disinfectants should be applied on the tools immediately after use on every plant.
Coffee leaf rust
He goes on to mention Coffee Leaf Rust as another problem to the farmers. It is a fungal disease leading to premature falling of leaves and reduced yield. It manifests in form of yellow spots on the leaf surfaces.
The spots enlarge and turn into orange coloured spores. The entire plant looks bare without sufficient leaves and fails to produce adequate coffee berries while the few which develop fall off prematurely. Ahagaana recommends good agronomical practices such as good field preparation, pruning and weeding and if the disease persists he advises farmers to use Amblus fungicide or Twinstar. These pesticides are found in most agro-input shops.
Farmers also grapple with common pests such as Coffee Mealybug which Ahagaana says is more destructive in water stress conditions. They feed on sap sucked from leaves, flower buds, young shoots, berries, and roots. The entire coffee plant yellows and loses leaves. Many plants eventually die.
His advice is removing and replacing dead plants but he also recommends preventing coffee branches from touching the ground besides applying insecticide such as Chlorpyrifos which is also available in agro-input shops countrywide.
John Kizza the farm supervisor at Kannabukuliro Coffee Farm says the support and guidance offered by Ahagaana and Rainbow Agro-science Company Ltd has been helpful mainly as far as keeping the plantation green and healthy.
“In the past, particularly during the dry period we suffered more pest attack which is no longer the case, now,” he told Seeds of Gold.
The Black Coffee Twig Borer (BCTB) is one of the most destructive pests in all Robusta Coffee growing areas of Uganda. The beetle drills holes in the coffee twigs to lay its eggs and causes wilting and drying of the twigs including those with coffee berries. According to UCDA the pest is also hosted by perhaps over a hundred other plants including, Musizi, Musambya, Cocoa, and Avocado. It can cause up to 50 percent loss if not controlled states the UCDA document.
Control of the pest includes measures such as removing and burning dead twigs. Ahagaana says this should involve the entire community in the neighbourhood because the pest can fly from as far away as 200 metres.
He also says the farmer should carry out proper pruning, avoid bushiness, and plant at recommended spacing.
He further recommended the use of pesticide known as Punto, sprayed on whole plants which, Annette Nanyonjo, one of the coffee farmers in the area, said has worked very well on her farm.
Another recommended way to fight the BCTB is to use the Broca trap which consists of a transparent water bottle inside which is placed a smaller bottle containing strong alcohol. The trap is tied on a coffee tree branch and attracts the pests which drink the alcohol and die. Agricultural Services Extension officers recommend that the trap should be refilled after every two or three weeks.