Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Soil mounding research to combat fungal pathogen Ganoderma

My research has been divided into several experiments which are currently on going in different Ganoderma infected areas in Peninsular Malaysia. One of the research is experiment on the soil mounding treatment. There has been some reports on the use of soil mounding treatment + with fungicides or biological control agents.


Lim et al., (1993) and Hassan and Turner (1994) showed that surgery followed by soil mounding around the base of mature diseased palms could bring about an increase in vigour and yield of oil palms. The treatment seems to be promising for prolonging the economic life of Ganoderma-infected oil palms by promoting root growth for nutrient absorption. Further studies by Tuck and Khairuddin (1997) indicated that soil mounding with fumigant and soil mounding alone were seem to be able to prolong productivity of oil palms through the physical benefit of preventing the weakened boles from being toppled by wind. However, this treatment did not prove to be curative.


Therefore, the objective of this treatment is to prolong the productive life of Ganoderma infected palm. For me, this is one of the aspect that need to be explore cause I believe a combination of mixed solution betweeen the use of biological control, fungicide, cultural practises, tolerance progeny and Good Agricultural Practises (GAP) need to be implemented in order to solve Ganoderma problem.






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