Nutfall Problem

Fiji Official's BBC Talk

MR. B. E. V. Parham, Senior Agricul tural Officer of Fiji, recently repre sented the South Pacific Commission at a United Nations Conference at Lake Success on the conservation and utilisa tion of resources.

He later went on to the UK and while there spoke over the BBC on some prob lems of tropical agriculture, notably pre mature nutfall. He said: — THE great expansion of coconut plant ing through the Pacific during the past forty years has brought many problems to the scientist. Some of these we have been able to answer; but we are still busy with others. Even so, much work was incomplete when the last war started. There were several puzzling problems yet to be solved when the Japanese armies invaded the Solomon Islands, Perhaps none of these is so interesting as that of premature nutfall in that Group. Before the war planters were faced with up to 70 per cent, loss of crop due to the young nuts dropping uselessly to the ground at a very early stage of development but in 1934 the cause of the trouble had been found to be the green coreid bug. Up to the time that war came to the islands, no satisfactory means of control had been discovered. When work was resumed after the end of the Japanese occupation we found that the ground beneath the palms, which before the war had been weeded and kept free of fallen fronds, was covered with litter, creeping vines and other vegetation, but that nevertheless, the palms were bearing normal crops.

We knew before the war that the coreid bug was either destroyed or driven off by the yellow tree-ant, and that where this and was plentiful, nutfall did not occur.

Unfortunately, the yellow ant was itself attacked in a losing battle by two other kinds of ants which always made their nests at the base of palm trunks and pre vented the yellow ants from moving* up or down the palms without being de stroyed. During the war, as cultivation found an unexpected ally in the accu ceased, we now know that the yellow ant mulation of vines and fallen fronds at the base of the palms. By these the yellow ants were able to by-pass their enemies and re-establish themselves in territories from which they had been ousted.

Last year the entomologists from our department of agriculture in Fiji, Mr. B.

A. O’Connor and Dr. Leach of Cambridge, spent some time in the Solomon Islands, and they have proved that where there is a bridge of fallen fronds leaning against the trunks of the palms, the yellow ant can more than hold its own.

It is hoped that by this simple means it will soon be assisted to spread to other areas where nutfall has been most severe.

The importance of this work may be ap preciated when I sav that in the Solomon Islands alone there are 62,000 acres of plantation coconuts, not including those owned by natives. These should, with the help of the yellow ant, produce at least 30,000 tons of copra per annum.

Mr. J. F. €. Briscoe. DFC, Deputy Director of Navigational Services (Aero dromes) in the United Kinedom Ministry of Civil Aviation, was in Fiji in February to discuss civil aviation matters with the Government. Air Vice-Marshal R. P.

Willcock, C. 8., Civil Aviation Adviser to the United Kingdom High Commissioner in Australia, was expected to arrive at Nadi on February 8. He will be in Fiji for six days, during which time he will discuss aviation matters with Mr. Briscoe and with local officials.