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March 1, 2022 05:25 pm

Potato Farmers Conquer a Devastating Worm - With Paper Made From Bananas

Low-tech approach can quintuple yield and slash need for soil pesticide. An anonymous reader shares a report: Potato cyst nematodes are a clever pest. These microscopic worms wriggle through the soil, homing in the roots of young potato plants and cutting harvests by up to 70%. They are challenging to get rid of, too: The eggs are protected inside the mother's body, which toughens after death into a cyst that can survive in the soil for years. Now, researchers have shown a simple pouch made of paper created from banana tree fibers disrupts the hatching of cyst nematodes and prevents them from finding the potato roots. The new technique has boosted yields fivefold in trials with small-scale farmers in Kenya, where the pest has recently invaded, and could dramatically reduce the need for pesticides. The strategy may benefit other crops as well. "It's an important piece of work," says Graham Thiele, a research director at the International Potato Center who was not involved with the study. But, "There's still quite a lot of work to take it from a nice finding to a real-life solution for farmers in East Africa," he cautions. Soil nematodes are a problem for many kinds of crops. For potatoes, the golden cyst nematode (Globodera rostochiensis) is a worldwide threat. Plants with infected, damaged roots have yellowish, wilting leaves. Their potatoes are smaller and often covered with lesions, so they can't be sold. In temperate countries, worms can be controlled by alternating potatoes with other crops, spraying the soil with pesticides, and planting varieties bred to resist infection. These approaches aren't yet feasible in many developing countries, in part because pesticides are expensive and resistant varieties of potatoes aren't available for tropical climates. In addition, small-scale farmers, who can make decent money selling potatoes, are often reluctant to rotate their planting with less valuable crops.

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