The Central Coffee Research Institute (CCRI) has developed a package to control the white stem borer (WSB), a serious pest affecting the Arabica coffee variety.

WSB is reported to be responsible for an estimated loss of about half a million plants each year resulting in crop loss of about 1,500 tonnes per annum. CCRI said in one of the recent experiments it has found out that it was possible to kill the borer beetles in the affected plants before their emergence to prevent the spread of infestation.

“If the adult beetles are prevented from emergence, then there is immense possibility of reducing the stem borer infestation levels to insignificant levels within quick time,” said Jawaid Akhtar, Chairman, Coffee Board, in a statement.

In the said experiment, CCRI had sprayed an insecticide formulation containing chlorpyrifos 50EC and cypermethrin 5EC on the affected stems and found that it was effective in controlling the spread of the borers. In view of the very encouraging results in the preliminary trials, the CCRI has planned elaborate multi-location field trails during the pre-monsoon flight season of this year (April-May 2015) to validate the results on a large scale.

CCRI said that the coffee growers could try this method on their fields on a limited area to quickly validate the results in their estates.

The method involves wrapping of the main stems of stem borer infested plants with strips of gunny bags and spraying the covered stem with the insecticide formulation at the dosage of 1.2ml/ litre of water along with 1 ml of a wetting agent.

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