Previous Story
Lack of bait hampers slug eradication effort on Rota
|
Posted on Sep 25 2005
The use of bait has exterminated millions of harmful slugs that feast on Rota’s agricultural crops, but experts fear that propagation of the slug population would become faster now that the bait supply has been exhausted.
Alejandro Badilles, crop protection leader of the Northern Marianas College’s Cooperative Research, Extension and Education Service, said the use of slug bait known as metal dehyde has stopped due to lack of funds.
Badilles underscored the need for the continued use of the bait that provides farmers immediate relief from the harm that slugs cause the crops. The slug control project also aims to control inter-island proliferation of the pest. No harmful slug has been documented on Saipan and Tinian.
Badilles said that CREES and the Department of Land and Natural Resources had been giving farmers certain quantities of the bait since March, but the supply lasted only a few months.
He said that, although the bait has substantially reduced the slug population on Rota, the pests continue to proliferate in millions. He said slugs could even be seen on streets during sunset or rainy season.
“In the absence of natural enemies, they propagate,” Badilles said. He estimated crop damage on Rota at 30-50 percent.
The Rota pests are actually Cuban slugs, scientifically known as Vernicella cubenis, which were believed to have come from Hawaii and Guam. The slugs were believed to have first reached Hawaii some 15 years ago though importation of ornamental plants.
When agricultural experts disclosed the proliferation of the pest on Rota sometime last year, they illustrated that a team had spotted about 300 slugs on a papaya tree.
Badilles said the Rota legislative delegation has identified funds for the slug control project, but the matter has yet to be approved by the governor. He said the funds would be used to purchase a new supply of metal dehyde and for research.
In the meantime, Badilles said the CREES has been training Rota farmers other strategies to combat the pests by planting “trap crops” that would gather the slugs so they could easily be picked up.
