J-on: January 2014: An independent news portal for UTAR Kampar

A Report on UTAR Agricultural Technology Seminar Series VII

By: Phuah Wei Xin

Compilation: Tan Weng Han

Subject: Agriculture Technology Seminar Series VII

Title: Enhancing Agro-biodiversity

Date: 30^th November 2013 (Saturday)

Venue: DDK1, Faculty of Science (FSc), UTAR Perak Campus.

Guests and staff: RM 10, Students: Free.

While attending a conference is long and lengthy in terms of time and energy consumption, a summary is much appreciated. Over the past few weeks J-On has dedicated to make a version available to everyone, especially to the FSc students as the content are academically 'rich'. There were six speakers involved in this seminar and each has mutually exclusive information on the environmental and agricultural criterion.

_________________________________________________________________________________

After the participants indulged in their breakfast and brief socializing moment; an opening speech by Associate Professor, Dr Tee Chong Siang; giving thanks to fellow participants comprising of Faculty of Science (FSc) staffs, speakers, guests (both local and foreigners) and students. Also give thanks to the sponsors for making this programme affordable for all and for the meals and refreshments throughout the programme.

Assistant Professor, Dr Alvina Grace Lai is the MC of this programme, invites Professor Dr Peter Ooi Aun Chuan, the honourable professor of FSc, the Chairman of Centre of Biodiversity Research to give a speech of gratitude.

Dr Francis Ng, the botanical garden consultant to 1 Utama City, as well as the International Collaborative Partner of UTAR Global Research Network is the moderator for the morning session of the seminar. He gave a brief speech about agriculture being developed that the younger generation are increasingly devoted themselves into it, his proof was the frequency of this seminar being held here. He then introduces the first speaker, the youngest.

First speaker, Mr Tan from United Malacca Berhad, shares his findings and techniques presentation entitled Management Practices and Agro-biodiversity. Definition of agro-biodiversity:

Planting of beneficial plants (usually for biological control of pests e.g. bagworms or for soil control)

Environmental friendly practice, using buffalo to plough the soil instead of using fuel consuming tractors which exhausts later)

Waste handling and disposal

Biomass recycling; for fertilising as they still contain some nutrients, which is equivalent to the commercial ones

Zero burning; the most environmental friendly technique practiced during replanting and new planting in Malaysia and other countries (but not Indonesia apparently)

Under-planting; the most interesting. This is a technique where a hole is dug out, placing the top soil on the bottom whiles the sub-soil on top, this way more nutrients provided for new plant.

Conclusion: Conserve agro-biodiversity, increase productivity and economic returns while managing pests and diseases.

Questions were open to the floor. A man asked if the under-planting technique is applicable to everywhere as it is known that Malacca has very little rainfall, he implies that if this technique is practice in “wetter” area, it could flood and drown the new plant. “Logically it is correct.” Said Mr Tan, implying that proper planning should be done before acting out anything.

The second speaker, Dr Hafidzi Mohd Noor from UPM was invited to present his share of enhancing agro-biodiversity. His is entitled ‘Sustainability of the Bio-control of Rats with Barn Owls in Combination with Chemical Rodenticides’.

Intro: gives statistics on rodent damage is the worst, causing 10% of hopeful loss, sometimes even up to 50% of crop loss. In South East Asia, the control is not effective. Malaysia has larger loss in rice fields, so they tried hunting rats down which they managed to destroy 40,000 rats. Even tried using cats as one of the means but cats no longer prey on rats. Snakes weren’t helpful too, hence they used rodenticides. The poison was effective, however, it was so toxic, it would kill everything even the crops itself. It is banned but still widely practiced today.

Rodenticides causes bait shyness where the rats are wary of the bait of oddly smell and taste that they would share info with the other rat mates, resulting in ineffectiveness of the rodenticides. Thus, bio-control will be the best alternative for this matter.

There are three types of bio-control; reliance of existing ones, manipulation of existing predators or introduce predators, usually exotic animals.

Barn owls are local species thus this is categories as a manipulating existing predators (although it is believed to be brought from Sumatra of Jawa).

Nesting is easy, just build boxes for them and they would breed in them. Food? The rats. Interestingly these owls swallow the rat whole, then regurgitates whatever that is not digested in a fur ball called pellets. They also stay in the same nest and stay with the same partner until death do they part.

This combination with rodenticide is needed as the owls only remove the surplus of rats. Problem arises when second generation of rodenticide is used as they are more toxic than the previous generation. It would affect the owls’ growth such as smaller beaks, talons, wings making them less efficient in hunting rats.

Conclusion: First generation of rodenticide used is dangerous, while the second generation is forgone. Thus, bio-rodenticide is the best alternative.

The third speaker, Professor Dr Paul Teng ST from NTU, Singapore shares his presentation on ‘Exploiting Biodiversity for Crop Disease Management'. He starts by expressing his feeling of this culture shock, he witness that the audience are still at good shape after three hours of the programme with absolutely no breaks, especially from the students.

Food security as the raison d'être (reason for existence), many threats to it also. Remembrance of the Irish Potato Famine.

Genetic, resistance, pathogen host relationships are physiological relationships, not a trophic level.

To cure rice plant disease, we need the understanding of the genome rather than its phenotypic breeding or environmental factors.

Conclusion: pathosystems management, HR and environmental management are proven effective techniques. It is possible for biotech tools to be used in ecology to enhance biodiversity. It must be done from small scale to large scale and requires multiple stakeholders. From simplex concept to complex impact.

The programme was continued with the fellow speakers and moderator for the morning session receiving a token of appreciation by one of the Deputy Dean of Faculty of Science, Associate Professor, Dr Gideon Khoo.

As the start of the afternoon session of the seminar, Associate Professor Dr Tee Chong Siang as the moderator introduces second foreign speaker Dr Amporn Winotai from Thailand to present her share and advice for fellow agriculture major on ‘Rearing and quality control of insect natural enemies.

Intro: the bottom line is using ‘good’ insect to control ‘bad’ insect. Every organism has their Natural Enemies (NEs) that includes parasitoids, predators, microorganisms and beneficial insects. The key is to know the proper techniques and know the information on the pests.

She is working on controlling pink cassava mealybugs (PCMs) that attacks pumpkins, I believe so. She added, since most of the bugs are female and each can produce 500 more within a month, this species has cause much trouble. Her time spent on studying this species has led her to a highly specific NE, a parasitoid.

This parasitoid only attacks PCM thus it will not cause harm to any other organisms, including the pumpkins. These parasitoids are grown and harvested very easily that even the farmers can do it themselves in a small box. Once harvested, they need only to release about 100 of them, once a month and let the parasitoid feed and kill PCMs.

The advantage is that insecticides are not needed as the farmers are too poor to buy these chemicals. The disadvantage of this technique however is that to pinpoint the NE of the pest is time consuming and are usually difficult as some NEs are very tiny.

She then further explained about the parasitoids. There are two types; endoparasitoids and ectoparasitoids. The parasitoid that attacks PCMs is ectoparasitoid, meaning that they consume the host from outside. Endoparasitoids consume the host from the inside, usually by the larvae hatching inside of the host and eats it way through the host until nothing is left or until they are mature enough to lay more eggs in the host.

Conclusion: This technique is great, simple, important and environmentally friendly.

The fifth speaker, our dear Professor Dr. Peter Ooi Aun Chuan to present his findings about ‘Managing pest fruit flies’. He started off by emphasising that he spent 40 years on finding out the answer on a question that no one seems to wonder. He then begun his presentation.

Many always assume that fruit flies are vinegar flies, truth is, nope.

Many only focused on the damage this pest caused, that their attention is diverted from the fact that those causing damage are only male flies. Many scholars reported the same results; only males but no one questioned it, just thinking that the females lay the eggs, left and only males hatched to consume the fruit.

He has found that the males actually consume methyl eugenol, a compound found in essential oils, oils derived from plants. This compound were to improve the male mating competitiveness in Bactrocera dorsalis, they would store this compound in a rectal gland, secreting it when approaching a female so that the female will choose to mate with it with the methyl eugenol scent.

This is to prove that the fruits are not the problem, it is methyl eugenol.

He added that most farmers would just throw those damaged fruits by B. dorsalis to the soil without knowing that the larva needs soil to survive and mature to adult flies. So, perhaps, the farmers are also contributing to the problem.

Conclusion, scholars must study to obtain the proper information and must educate the farmers on managing the pests.

Professor Dr. Ooi, engrossed in his presentation.

Off to the next and last speaker, Dr Mohd Roff to give a presentation on ‘Enhancing Biological Control in Malaysia’. He firstly thanked his acquaintance Dr Amporn on the introduction on NEs. He continued by explaining the need of biological control emphasising on the green revolution as we have to resort to it because pesticides are too harmful.

He then gave a brief history about biological control; many would think that this method is practiced recently, about 100 years ago. On the contrary, it dated back so far, before Christ. Of course back then, people do not really know what they were doing as those previous attempts, seemed to be fruitful but eventually, the predator became the problem.

There are three ways in enhancing the effectiveness of NEs in pest control; namely classical, augmentive and conservation of indigenous NEs.

He then went on about cross planting; planting different species together, will too affect production and results.

Conclusion: He hopes to collaborate with Thailand (Dr Amporn), introducing this method to Malaysia as he is fascinated that the farmers there are learning and applying the NEs method. There is a need to convinced the Malaysian government to produce policies in introducing NEs to agriculture nationally as to currently there are none in this country that produce these beneficial insects.

In the wrap up, Assistant Professor, Dr Alvina Grace Lai thanked the moderator, Associate Professor Dr Tee Chong Siang to moderate the session then invited Professor Dr Peter Ooi Aun Chuan to give the closing speech and a brief summary of each speaker’s presentation. She then invited another Deputy Dean of FSc, Associate Professor Dr Wong Hann Ling to honour each afternoon session speakers with a token of appreciation. The seminar is adjourned at 4.30 p.m. and light refreshments/tea time is served.