Fright For Bsip

Oil Palm

Project

From a Honiara correspondent The Solomon Islands’ oil palm project—one of the hopes for the future — had an awful fright in September-October when a deadly type of fungus, fusarium oxysporum, was thought to have slipped into the country with oil palm seed from Africa. No one knew certainly, but it was possible. The disease, vascular wilt, kills 20-30 per cent of trees.

Towards the end of October there was no certainty that in fact the disease had not entered with Ivory Coast seed which had apparently not been properly treated in its country of origin. But the wholesale in cineration of 32,000 seeds and seed lings—enough to plant roughly 800 acres of the Guadalcanal Plain—was thought by Solomon Islands Planta tions Limited to have eradicated what prospects there were. They were ready to burn another 8,000 seedlings from Malaysia where the disease does not exist, if it was thought that the fungus might have been transferred in the open air nursery of 10 acres near Honiara.

The Governing Council met in private to amend legislation so that the nursery could be put into quaran tine. Meanwhile, the company (an off shoot of the giant UK based Com monwealth Development Corporation) had unofficially imposed quarantine, and was spraying the nursery daily with fungicide.

A side effect of the scare in the Solomons was the alerting of Papua New Guinea to the same source of seed. Word in Honiara was that a shipment of seed from the Ivory Coast passed through Port Moresby without interference to Lae where it was stopped before reaching the New Britain oil palm development. There it sat while the Agriculture depart ment waited for the seed to demon strate whether it did present a danger to the country’s bigger and longer established industry.

Solomon Islands Plantation in October had 1,500 acres planted with some 73,000 Malaysian seedlings, largely without a hitch, since planting began last year. The possible presence of the fungus will delay the planting programme by at least four months, according to acting manager of SIPL, Noel Hanson.

But it could be longer—eight to 12 months—depending on the avail ability of replacement seed. Another 9,000 seeds were being planted during

November, but that will not go near the planned planting of about 2,000 acres a year at 48 seeds to the acre.

South East Asia and the Pacific are free from vascular wilt, which attacks the oil palm tree from the roots after it is well established and kills it. The preferred Malaysian seed has become scarce with the massive planting campaign going on in that country, so to keep to its own plant ing plan, SIPL resorted to the Ivory Coast seed.

From the first lot of 20,000 seeds only about 13,000 germinated, and this was what aroused suspicion. In mid-September, SIPL went to the Solomons Agriculture Department’s principal research officer, Derek Taysam, to get his opinion on this poor result which was about twice as bad as could be expected. Taysam quickly suspected the deadly form of fusarium oxyspomm, especially when the Agriculture Department’s own Dala Research Station revealed there

were fungi present in the badly affected seed kernels.

At the same time Taysam had sent samples to the Commonwealth Mycological Institute (specialising in fungi) at Kew in England. Less than three weeks after first seeing the fungus-affected seed, Taysam had con firmation that it was the type of fungus he feared. Dr Peter Turner, British authority on oil palm diseases and consultant to Commonwealth Development Corporation, had also visited and was coming to the same conclusion.

Where the doubt still lay was in the similarity of the fungi which caused the non-germination or suspended germination of the seed but which ceased being a problem at that stage, and their relatives which stayed around until they killed the developing tree.

With the burning of the African seed we may never be sure if the deadly relative was the sinister visitor.