The history has some macabre past resulting due to plant disease. In absence of proper diagnosis and treatment of plant disease, a tiny but insidious fungus caused the ‘Irish famine’ and annihilated a large number of Irish Population in the late 18th Century. However, things have slowly changed after the green revolution, many farmers know dos and don’ts during an infestation of disease. Technologies have an advanced and new method of farming and pest management like the one: IPM has been developed and proper management of disease and pest are possible.
Every living creature on this earth suffers from the disease. Human express their disease suffering verbally, whereas plant could not so farmers through observation of expressed signs and symptoms access the disease, to his/her cognizance level about the disease and management technique a farmer apply that technique. However, sometimes some signs and symptoms of the disease are equivocal enough to elude the understanding of farmers, and thus the applied management technique efficacy diminishes. The perplexing signs and symptoms need a meticulous diagnosis to come to reach the conclusion fora recommendation of management techniques. In such a situation, the farmer can either visit the nearest agriculture service center to get expert advice or without proper consultation of experts–apply pesticides by contacting the nearest agro-vets.
Apart from the extension service through an agriculture service center, Plant Protection Directorate (PPD) has started a rapid and accurate way of diagnosing disease through Plant Clinic. To people who are oblivion about ‘Plant Clinic’–it is similar to the mobile human clinic, but the difference is, here, ill humans are not treated, but human for check-ups brings plants that are afflicted with pain for proper diagnosis. The trained extension officers who are referred “plant doctors” carry diagnosis and recommend the management techniques. If the disease symptoms could not be diagnosed promptly, the diseased part is sent to a laboratory for scrutiny so that the causation of disease could be established and farmers get the correct remedy.
In such a situation, the Plant Clinic that can provide rapid and maximum time correct diagnosis to the malady plant part can be handy.
A few days back ‘Plant Clinic’ was organized by the International Association of Students in Agriculture and Related Sciences (IAAS LC HICAST) in association with IDE Nepal. Plant clinic was uncanny to farmers—as they had never heard and visited the plant clinic it was first of the kind to them, as we had informed a day earlier about organizing plant clinic to local farmers; the enthusiastic farmers began queuing with the diseased parts from 11 am.
Experience
A man in his thirties entered the plant clinic and headed towards my desk with disease-infected plants in his hand. I greeted him Namaste, and followed by a question: what is the problem? He asked for the medicine to obliterate the pest from his vegetable field, which was plaguing his plants from proper growth and development. I asked him what he used to do before to manage the pests. Doubt about my credence in his face, “ I would thoroughly spray and soak plants with the medicine to keep them at bay.” he replied, “ aakhir kira ra dhusi ta hataunu paryo ni, na vaye eutai ramro sanga falne haine.” While other “plant doctor” tried to explain to him that environment is full of insects and not all insects are harmful, his face revealed dissuaded and anguished, he asked, “How to know which is useful and harmful?” There are some insects which feed on pest and tries to balance the natural ecosystem, these useful insects ( by showing pictures) like ladybird beetle, spider, green lacewings, tiger beetle, etc should be preserved. The natural enemies maintain the balance of the ecosystem and are crucial for limiting the population of the pest. He seemed disaffected perhaps because he did not get the medicine he was expecting. I doubt if he is growing vegetables this year.
Many farmers still believe that when the plants are infected with pests they need medicine to protect, but actually, the medicine they think they are using is not a medicine but is a pesticide that kills or suppresses the population of pests and helps the plant grow and develop without hindrance. Since pesticides are poison if they are improperly handled, they may cause grave consequences to human health.
The belief system of many farmers of treating pesticide as panacea needs a paradigm shift and this is only possible through proper dissemination of knowledge on pests, pesticides and biological control agents.
Decreasing is increasing
The key to increasing productivity is decreasing the losses of the crop yield. Yearly, plant diseases, pests, and weeds are estimated to cause a loss of up to 40 percent. This is a huge loss in terms of monetary value and total productivity. If we curb the loss even by the slightest percent, the total could increase and the production from our farmlands could be enough to feed our people. However, saying such it all depends on farmers to apply the recommended technique.
The disease is inevitable, but the choice of what to use and shun during disease infestation is in the farmer’s hand. Haphazard use of chemicals without proper deliberation on using pesticides can turn costly—both environmentally and on farmer-plant health condition, due to less sophisticated techniques applied to diagnose plant disease the cost incurred to diagnose the plant disease is cheap, genuine, accurate and advice are highly useful. The extension in the plant clinic stresses on pragmatic IPM approach and the use of chemicals as the last resort of management.
Susan Thapa is a recent agriculture graduate.
Jagadish Bhakta Shrestha was a Director-General of Department of Environment and currently working as an Associate Professor of HICAST.
