Agri AUG SEPT 09.indd - Agri SA

agri
Fokus / Focus
NEW SOLUTION TO SA’S VERMIN PROBLEM
This year, the food industry will have to comply with
HACCP in order to be issued permits to trade. This
means that, with health regulations becoming more
stringent, business owners and farmers must find
ways of solving their vermin problems.
New, electromagnetic technology which has helped
Australia deal effectively with its mice, rat and other pest
problems has been launched in South Africa where rodent
populations are now reaching epidemic proportions.
Plug-In Pest Free has been heralded as the new ‘pied piper in
town’. It eradicates all rats, mice and cockroaches from buildings
and is the most cost-effective way of controlling the problem. The
unit plugs into the wall socket and creates an electro-magnetic
After this it was identified by Mr Ian
Millar, a taxonomist of the National
Insect Collection in Pretoria. The
discovery of the Pomegranate whitefly
(Siphoninus phillyreae) is a further headache
for South African fruit farmers and
gardeners. Recently Prof Giliomee’s
discovery of the exotic Woolly whitefly
(Aleurothixus floccosus), which attacks
citrus, also made the headlines.
Contrary to what their name suggests,
these insects are not flies but are rather
more closely related to scale insects and
aphids. The adults look like tiny moths
and fly around rapidly while at the
younger stages they are suctioned onto
the underside of leaves. According to
Prof Giliomee, these whiteflies have the
potential to become very troublesome and
to do a great deal of damage.
When they arrived in California in 1988,
the whiteflies affected many shrubs and
trees so badly that the plants lost all their
leaves and the harvest of fruit trees was
reduced.
“Young pear trees even died as a result of
repeated exfoliation,” Prof Giliomee says.
“In cities and towns, the sticky honeydew
that is secreted during the sap-sucking
early stages, landed on cars and on people
and was even carried into houses by the
wind to make carpets and furniture sticky
too.
“It was intolerable and the pest was only
brought under control in California when
parasites were imported,” he said.
The Pomegranate whitefly originates in
countries around the Mediterranean Sea
like Spain, Italy, Israel and Egypt where,
apart from garden shrubs, it attacks a
wide range of fruit trees. It later spread
to India, Iran and New Zealand. A great
number of pomegranate cuttings have
been imported into South Africa from
Israel and India in the past few years. Prof
field around the wiring of the premises. Its primary benefit
to the agricultural industry would be to protect storehouses,
barns, warehouses and packing plants from rodents eating the
harvested grain, bailed produce, or seeds and supplements.
The Plug-In Pest Free unit has been passed by both SABS and
HACCP (Hazard Analytical Critical Control Point) and has been
successfully tested in various scientific double blind tests.
The system works in ridding grain and seed storage areas of rats
and prevents them gnawing through wires and floors, paper and
packaging etc., in buildings.
It is also environmentally friendly and saves money. Pets are not
exposed to toxic and poisonous rat pellets, and rats that have
eaten the pellets won’t poison barn owls. For more information,
please contact Will Gubb on 021 464 1144 or 071 602 5793. a
The exotic Pomegranate or Ash whitefly, which can severely damage garden shrubs, apple and pear trees, olive trees,
citrus and pomegranate trees, was noticed recently for the first time in South Africa by Professor Jan Giliomee, a
research associate at the Department of Botany and Zoology at Stellenbosch University.
Another harmful whitefly establishes
itself in South Africa
Colonies of the immature Pomegranate
whitefly attached to leaves by suction.
agri Augustus/August • September 2009 44
PHOTO CREDIT: STELLENBOSCH UNIVERSITY/ANTON JORDAAN
Giliomee surmises that the new whitefly
entered the country with plant material
that was brought in illegally and did
not go through the quarantine process
required by law.
Prof Giliomee says he saw the insect here
for the first time on a wild olive tree in the
garden of his beach house at Vermont
on the Overberg coast. A month later he
received heavily infested pomegranate
leaves from a farmer at Halfmanshof near
Porterville, who suspected that it was the
Woolly whitefly. Mr Millar then established
that they were, however, also examples of
the new arrival.
“The fact that the appearance of these
whiteflies is already so widespread indicates
that they have been in the country
for some time and can therefore not be
eradicated,” he stated.
“The question is now whether the numbers
are going to remain relatively low
or whether the situation in California is
going to repeat itself here,” Prof Giliomee
said. “It must now be established whether
wasps that prey on the pest are present
here and, if not, they must be imported
urgently.”
No remedies have yet been tested for
combating the whitefly. a
Engela Duvenage
For more information, please contact Prof
Jan Giliomee, (021) 808-2718 or jhg@sun.
ac.za