Campaign to rid island of dreaded bud rot begins

Agricultural experts have begun injecting chemicals into Saipan’s betel nut trees to prevent further spread of the but rot disease, which has killed some 3,000 trees on the island.

Isidoro Cabrera, agricultural consultant to the Northern Marianas College’s Cooperative Research Extension and Education Service, said the move began on Thursday last week.

The CREES and the Division of Agriculture have been assisting local farmers in injecting Fosphite, the chemical formula that is being used to fight the disease caused by fungus known as Phytophthora meadii.

According to the Department of Lands and Natural Resources, the fungus is a plant pathogen that kills betel nut trees within a few weeks after infection. It said the bud rot disease is quite easily spread by spores being blown in the wind, by use of a contaminated knife while cutting nuts from the tree, or by simply carrying the disease on the nuts taken from an infected tree.

The DLNR earlier said the betel nut bud rot disease is “the genetic cousin of the phytophthora that caused the potato famine that devastated Ireland in the 1840s.”

Sometime last year, the CNMI government adopted an emergency regulation banning the importation of betel nut from Guam due to the spread of the bud rot disease on that territory. Agricultural experts discovered the presence of the disease on Saipan early this year, threatening the island’s $6-million betel nut industry.

“It’s spreading and I will not be surprised if three or four months from now, the rate will be higher,” Cabrera said.

He said the disease has killed some 3,000 of the island’s 100,000 betel nut trees. Infections have been found in different farms in Marpi, As Teo, Tanapag, Garapan, Chalan Kiya, Dandan, San Vicente, Papago, Capitol Hill, Gualo Rai, As Perdido, San Antonio, and Kagman.

The CREES and the Agriculture Division bought the chemical to prevent the spread of the disease, using funds appropriated by the Legislature.

The disease once spread on some betel nut plantations on Saipan sometime in 1997. Cabrera had said the disease wiped out some 8,000 to 10,000 trees at three plantations in As Lito, when Saipan’s betel nut tree population was about 60,000. But he said the fungus vanished in 1998.

Cabrera had said that one of the symptoms of the disease is the development of dark spots on the leaf sheath. Another indication of an infected tree is when the leaf spear can be easily pulled out and has rotten odor.

“After the fungus infects a tree, it forms spores on infected tissue, and a cottony web-like growth on the edges of the dark spots. Spores are blown by wind and rain to surrounding areas starting new infections, especially when trees are planted close together,” said Cabrera, citing information from the University of Guam.

Cabrera urged betel nut farmers to call 287-0571 to request for chemical injection into their trees.