Agriculture Business Week

The first “invasion” happened in 1982 in Palawan. Farmers in the area recall collecting tons of rice black bugs (RBB) every night at the height of its invasion.

Time and again, its spread in the Visayas and Mindanao resulted in 15 to 23 percent yield loss. And its occurrence in Sorsogon in late 2005 alarmed Central Luzon, where rice is primarily grown in contiguous areas along with alternate host crops of RBB such as okra, corn and taro.

Preventing its spread and managing its occurrence are the ways to go to ensure that this invasive species does not affect current rice production. However, management techniques mostly use synthetic pesticides, which may be the only known and affordable option of farmers’ defense against RBB invasion.

The Philippine Rice Research Institute (PhilRice) recently published a book on RBB covering extensive information on its taxonomy, ecology, and management with Dr. Leocadio S. Sebastian, PhilRice executive director, as one of the editors. Dr. Sebastian teamed up with Drs. Alberto T. Barrion and Ravindra C. Joshi to bring forth an 800-page book titled “Rice Black Bugs: Taxonomy, Ecology, and Management of Invasive Species.” The book is co-published with the Department of Science and Technology and the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. It interprets old problems and introduces new ecological techniques for RBB management. As suggested by Dr. Hans Rudolf Herren, an internationally acclaimed entomologist and recipient of the 1995 World Food Prize, farmers should learn more about ecological and sustainable management options for RBB to prevent crop losses and diminish environmental damage at the same time.

The book includes ecologically-sound management approaches to RBB outbreaks, as well as country reports of RBB invasions in other rice-growing countries. The Philippine Council for Agriculture, Forestry and Natural Resources Research and Development (PCARRD) and the Bureau of Agricultural Research likewise supported the printing of the book.

One accessory of the RBB book is an auto-run DVD-ROM containing about 350 published full-text articles on RBB sourced out from experts around the
world, dating way back 1864 to 2006. All articles are searchable using both natural language and keywords from a structured vocabulary indexed automatically by freeware Search Engine Builder.

Dr. M.S. Swaminathan, father of the Green Revolution in India and one-time director general of IRRI, recalls the beginnings of the book through a workshop organized to answer the alarms raised by the onset of RBB in the Bicql Region. Researchers from PhilRice convening then with the DA, IRRI and UP Los Banos researchers further inspired them to come’up with an exhaustive RBB information material in the form of this book. Swaminathan gave the book’s foreword and hopes the RBB book will be widely used by scientists, policy makers, consumers and farmers so that the threat of RBB will soon be part of history.

The book is available for sale at PhilRice, Maligaya, Science City of Munoz, Nueva Ecija at P2,500 per copy or $52 and $102 for developing and developed countries, respectively. Excluded are shipping and handling costs.