Coffee Board makes progress in its effort to tackle the white stem borer pest

KOCHI: The Coffee Board has made some progress in its effort to tackle the white stem borer pest, which has been the bane to Arabica coffee, destroying as much as 1,500 tonne annually.
In one of its experiments, the Central Coffee Research Institute (CCRI) has found that the adult beetles of stem borer could be killed before their emergence.

"If the adult beetles are prevented from emergence, there is immense possibility of reducing the stem borer infestation to insignificant level within quick time," Coffee Board chairman Jawaid Akhtar said.

The institute has planned elaborate multi-location field trials during the pre-monsoon season of April-May this year to validate the results on large scale.

The cultivation of Arabica coffee is concentrated in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. As a result of the pest attack, the board had revised downwards 6% the post-monsoon estimate of Arabica output in the country to 99,600 tonne.

Karnataka Planters' Association chairman K Kurian, however, fears that the output could be far lesser at around 60,000 tonne. Though the institute has come out with a comprehensive recommendation to control coffee stem borer, in recent years the incidence of the pest has increased considerably owing to several factors such as growers' inability to adopt timely control measures and changing weather conditions.

The growers often postpone the removal of infested plants during the post-monsoon period till the end of January by which time the adult beetles would have emerged and laid eggs on nearby plants, Akhtar said.

Already, many growers have shifted from the cultivation of Arabica to Robusta, which is more resistant to such pest attacks. According to the board, the pest is reported to have wiped out the entire coffee sector in Sri Lanka and Vietnam during the early 19th century.