CCRI believes to have found a solution to the white stem borer

India’s troubles with the white stem borer could be over, if the latest study conducted by the Central Coffee Research Institute (CCRI) is anything to go by.

The white stem borer (Xylotrechus javanicus) has been especially prevalent in recent times, causing widespread crop loss on around one hundred plantations in the primary coffee growing areas of Karnataka state.

Farmers in Karnataka produce around seventy percent of India’s coffee.

“[It is] a serious pest,” Jawaid Akhtar, the chairman of the national Coffee Board explained to the local press.

Akhtar went on to say that this particular species of borer beetle is believed to be responsible for the loss of 500,000 coffee plants and 1,500 tonnes of coffee per annum.

Over the past year or so the CCRI has been trialling a number of different methods to prevent the spread of the borer and it seems that they have come across a way of deal with the problems caused by the pest.

In one experiment, infested plants were marked and then they were partially covered. This cover was then sprayed with a specially concocted formula of insecticide and left for a period of time. When the researchers returned, they found that the majority of the adult borers had perished and infestation rates across the nearby fields were noticeably lower.

“For the first time it has been demonstrated successfully that the adult [borers] could be killed before their emergence,” Akhtar noted in a statement.

“If the adult beetles are prevented from emerging, then there is [an] immense possibility of reducing the stem borer infestation levels.”

As a direct consequence of this experiment and their encouraging findings, the CCRI is in the midst of planning a more elaborate and large-scale trials in the coming months to, hopefully, validate their initial results.