Jakarta – The National Research Study and Innovation Firm (BRIN) revealed on Tuesday that environment change has actually triggered a surge in the populations of brown planthoppers ( BPH) that are ruining rice plants in Indonesia.
” Environment change has actually led to the spread and population surge of insects, especially brown planthoppers,” stated Elza Surmaini, a scientist at BRIN’s Center for Climate and Atmospheric Research Study, during a dialogue on “The Effect of Climate Modification on Rice Vermin” in Jakarta.
The brown planthopper (Nilaparvata lugens) is one of the significant pests of rice plants.
The peak of BPH attacks in Indonesia was taped throughout the La Niña phenomenon in 2021 and2011 At that time, around 137,000 hectares of rice fields were damaged, and another 222,000 hectares experienced a production decrease of about 1-2 tons per hectare.
The damage to the crops at that time was 7 times greater than in 2012 when only 29,000 hectares of rice fields were harmed, she added.
Increased rainfall caused by La Niña throughout the dry season activated BPH attacks on farming land in lots of parts of Indonesia.
Besides rainfall, numerous elements affect the breeding, circulation, and resistance of insects, such as increased air humidity, soil moisture, and wind speed, Surmaini stated.
Based on information offered by the Directorate General of Food Crops of the Ministry of Farming, from 1989 to 2019, every La Niñan occurrence triggered BPH attacks on agricultural land, impacting 90,000 to 250,000 hectares of farmland.
In comparison, throughout typical conditions, such attacks impacted just 10,000 to 85,000 hectares of farmland.
BPH attacks in Indonesia are most common throughout the dry season, which falls in between June and August. From 2005 to 2021, pest break outs happened during the La Niña durations in 2010 and 2011.
” The dry season makes crops more vulnerable to pest attacks,” Surmaini discussed.
The Head of BRIN’s Food Crops Research study Center, Yudhistira Nugraha, stated that the decrease in rice production due to BPH attacks in several locations had actually raised rice prices at the customer level.
Insect attacks have actually also increased using insecticides, he said.
” Our study in several agricultural production centers on the North Coast of Java discovered that the application of insecticides has ended up being illogical since, in one crop season, they sprayed more than 10 times,” he informed.
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