Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

The high price and the scarci­ty of co­conuts are at­trib­uted to the in­va­sive alien species called the red palm mite.

The co­conut in­dus­try con­tin­ues to face se­vere threats by the pest which was first re­port­ed in the Caribbean in 2004 and ar­rived in Trinidad in 2006. Cur­rent­ly it is rav­aging pop­u­lar ar­eas in Man­zanil­la/Co­cal, Guayagua­yare, Bam­boo No 2, Ica­cos and west­ern parts of To­ba­go. At a stake­hold­ers' meet­ing yes­ter­day Food Pro­duc­tion Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath said he was "poignant­ly" aware of the dev­as­ta­tion which pests, such as the red palm mite, could cause to an in­dus­try if left unchecked. In his brief re­marks, Bharath said: "The red palm mite has been in­stru­men­tal in the over 70 per cent de­cline in co­conut pro­duc­tion, an in­crease in the price and scarci­ty of co­conuts and co­conut wa­ter on the mar­ket."

The meet­ing was host­ed by the T&T Agri-busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion and the Cen­tre for Agri­cul­ture and Bio-Sci­ence In­ter­na­tion­al at the Court­yard by Mar­riott, In­vaders Bay, Port-of-Spain. It was held to sen­si­tise stake­hold­ers on an in­te­grat­ed pest man­age­ment strat­e­gy to com­bat the mite. Boast­ing of T&T's unique­ness, Bharath said there was nowhere else in the world a per­son could or­der a Scotch and co­conut wa­ter. He said: "We all know how im­por­tant a role co­conut plays in the life of a Trin­bag­on­ian. "Which one of us does not en­joy a brisk walk around the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah fol­lowed by a re­fresh­ing drink of co­conut wa­ter from the ever-present ven­dors? "And where else in the world can we or­der a scotch and co­conut wa­ter?" The min­is­ter said when he as­sumed of­fice he was out in the fields fight­ing an in­fes­ta­tion of the horn­worm cater­pil­lar.

Bharath an­nounced the es­tab­lish­ment of a tech­ni­cal work­ing group on palm pest com­plex by plant health di­rec­tors of the Caribbean Com­mu­ni­ty. He added one of the na­tion­al projects for T&T was the in­ter­ven­tion in the Nar­i­va Swamp to en­sure the sur­vival of the Morische Palm by lim­it­ing the spread of the red palm mite. Philippe Agos­ti­ni, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the Co­conut Grow­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion, said es­tates had been los­ing mon­ey since 2007 and on­ly were op­er­at­ing due to cash in­jec­tion. He said pro­duc­tion had de­creased by close to 80 per cent and due to that prices had es­ca­lat­ed up to 200 per cent. He de­scribed the sit­u­a­tion as "dev­as­tat­ing" and ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment at the pre­vi­ous Gov­ern­ment. He urged the new ad­min­is­tra­tion to as­sist.

More In­fo

?The red palm mite al­so af­fects suharie (fig) leaves, he­li­co­nias, gin­ger, ex­ot­ic palm. Char­ac­ter­is­tic symp­tons in­clude pre­ma­ture yel­low­ing, dry­ing and death of low­er leaves. Once the pest at­tacks, the leaves of the plant would with­er and the tree stops pro­duc­ing.