Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Oil palm clones disease

I used to report on a Drechslera infection to oil palm clones at early nursery stage. It's economically serious cause one clone seedling will cost you around RM 30. Just imagine that's this fungus has infected more than thousand of oil palm clones. Nevertheless, this is a very rare case. Normally, common diseases at the nursery stage would be Curvularia or Glomerella. So happen, I just started my job and that was my first assignment. So I took the challenge by using fungicides and I succeeded. I traced back the clones till to the lab and asked them to do some major sterilisation with air conditioner and protocols. Now, the application of the fungicides have been a Standard Operation Procedure for FASSB.

REPORT ON CLONE’S DISEASE INCIDENCE

Recommendation to control the disease incidence

Symptom of infection has been detected since arrival of the clones. Symptoms such as yellowish zone occurred on the healthy leaf. After several days, the yellowish zone started to become brown color. Then, the leaves dried and die completely. Investigation must be develop starting from the lab due to observation that clones have been infected by the time they reached to the nursery.

From the infected clones, one isolate of fungi has been isolated. The fungus has been identified as Drechslera but more identification process has to be made to confirm the identified fungus.

Clones with symptoms need to be separate from other healthy clones in order to prevent the fungus from infect the healthy clones. Two trial need to be set up regarding the fungicides treatment.

Trial 1
- Clones with symptoms will be placed in a separate place.
- Application of Kenlate and Dithane will be made.
- Application of the fungicides will be made once a week for each fungicide according to the rate suggested by the chemical company.
- Observation will be recorded at 3 days interval.

Trial 2
- Clones with symptoms will be places in a separate place.
- Application of Thiram will be made
- The application will be applied once a week for each fungicide according to the rate suggested by the chemical company.
- Observation will be recorded at 3 days interval.

The trial must be held under tight watering system to avoid any secondary infection.










4 comments:

hafiz said...

Salam ,
Im yusry attch to Sime Darby Plnt
we exp curvularia in our nursery both clonal and normal DxP seedling

based on ur exp hw best we treat the infection and in ur case was the infection is frm lab?

hefni said...

Sorry Yusry,

I haven't open my blog for ages!! You can use treatment 1 to treat them. Cover the seedlings with plastic cover as Curvularia can spread by wind and also reduce the water pressure so the spore doesn't splash to neighboring seedling.

If I were you, I will investigate the source of it.

Unknown said...

Heard anything about Disease-Free Tray System? You could refer to May 2010 ISP The Planter page 319-320.

hefni said...

No, I haven't heard Disease-Free Tray System. Thanks for the info!