May 27, 2009
Joy Landis of Michigan State University’s IPM Program is chronicling the travels on her blog.
Frank Zalom-Barno Tashpulatova project
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| Frank Zalom is part of a team delivering IPM to Central Asia. (Photo by Kathy Keatley Garvey) |
DAVIS—UC Davis entomology professor and integrated pest management (IPM) specialist Frank Zalom is heading for Central Asia to participate in a regional IPM stakeholders’ forum and a pest diagnostics training workshop.
Zalom is a co-investigator on the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Collaborative Research Support Project (CRSP) grant, which is sponsoring the third Integrated Pest Management Stakeholders’ Forum for the Central Asia Region. The event takes place June 1-5 in Bishhek, Kyrgyzstan.
Scientists from Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Tajikistan, as well as Kyrgyzstan, will confer with Zalom and his IPM colleagues from Michigan State University, Ohio State University, Montana State University, and the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA).
The project fosters development of a comprehensive IPM initiative, using an ecologically based and multidisciplinary systems approach, Zalom said.
The stakeholders’ forum will include talks by key governmental and agricultural officials, and updates on IPM progress and concerns in the four Central Asian countries.
Zalom and his colleague from Uzbekistan, Barno Tashpulatova, will speak on “Enhancing the Efficiency and Product Lines of Biolaboratories in Central Asia.”
Additional topics include: “Results of a Flowering Plants Study and Introduction in Agro Landscapes in Tajikistan”; “Development and Dissemination of IPM Knowledge to Farmers,” and “Introduction of IPM Educational Program Into Universities’ Curriculum in Central Asia.”
Fields visits are planned to farmer-student field schools and research plots.
Zalom will serve as one of the instructors at the June 3-4 plant disease and pest diagnostics workshop titled “New and Emerging Problems and Diagnostic Techniques.” ICARDA entomologist Mustafa Bohssini and Zalom will provide the training on insect identification. Other topics of the seven-member field diagnostics team will discuss what you can do with your eye, brain, a spade and a hand lens; field-usable immunoassays for disease diagnosis; and how to take good digital images.
Workshop participants also will learn how to develop a multidisciplinary diagnostics laboratory.
The USAID IPM CRSP Project for Central Asia includes Michigan State University scientists Karim Maredia, Doug Landis, George Bird and Walter Pett, collaborating with ICARDA entomologist Mustafa Bohssini and the ICARDA office in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.
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| This is an image from Joy Landis' blog about the IPM team's travels. |
“The specific focus for my lab,” Zalom said, “is to enhance the capacity and expand the product lines of the extensive network of biolaboratories in these countries that were developed under the former Soviet Union and are still in existence. Since the mid-1970s, emphasis for insect control has been on integrated pest management, with augmentative releases of Trichogramma and Habrobracon parasitoids, and Chrysoperla carnea, the green lacewing, reared in these biolaboratories, being the major approach.”
Government sources estimate that releases of these three natural enemies occur on about 12 million hectares in Uzbekistan alone.
At the inaugural Central Asia IPM Stakeholders’ Forum, held in May 2005 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, local scientists, government agencies, non-government organizations and group representing farmers from the former Soviet Union republics identified several priority areas of research: improved efficiency of entomophage production, expanded product lines to include additional entomophages targeting different species than the pest targets of the three species currently being produced, and expansion of crop usage. Initial work focuses on the production and release of predatory mites.
The USAID IPM CRSP project is targeting the needs assessment and priorities that were identified at the Uzbekistan forum:
1. Enhance the biodiversity and biological pest management of landscape ecology
2. Enhance efficiency, products line and crop usage of Central Asian biolaboratories.
3. Develop and implement IPM extension/outreach and university education programs.
Joy Landis of the Michigan State University’s IPM Program is chronicling the travels on her blog.
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--Kathy Keatley Garvey
Communications specialist
UC Davis Department of Entomology
(530) 754-6894
