Water resources policy and administrative management

Liriomyza spp.(leafminer) is a serious pest problem in vegetable and flower production in Mauritius. Almost all crops are susceptible to leaf miner attack. Leafminer adults are small, black and yellow flies whose lifespan is between 15 to 30 days. Female Liriomyza spp. lay 200-400 eggs during an interval of 2 to 4 days. The eggs take 2 days to hatch. Liriomyza spp. stays in larvae form for 4 to 8 days, and feeds on leaves. Lead miner damage the leaves of plants and the fruits by the mining activity of the larvae of pest that can eventually reduce the photosynthetic capacity of plants, and the feeding punctures of female adults that allow entry of pathogens into the plants. The leaf miner feeding pattern results in serpentine mines (slender, white, winding trails) and heavily-mined leaves have large whitish blotches. Leaves injured by leaf miners drop pre-maturely, and, heavily infested plants lose most of their leaves. This defoliation drastically reduces yield if it does not kill the plant itself. To counter this problem, planters often resort to heavy spraying of their crops with pesticides, thereby giving rise to environmental and health problems. The objective of this project is to use 700 x1m2 UV treated boards that are lemon-yellow coloured and greased, mounted on poles and fixed in fields as traps to capture leaf miners in mass. The trap is a hardened plastic board of lemon yellow colour of about one metre square (1sq.m). The board surface, both faces, are greased with a thin layer of normal, transparent lubricating material. The lemon yellow colour is known to attract the leaf miner insect, which, once landed on the greased, sticky surface, gets stuck, trapped and finally dies. The aim is to diminish the use and dependency on chemicals and pesticides through the implementation of an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) package as a pilot project on about 70 acres of land in the Plaine Sophie region of Mauritius for a year.

Mauritius