Organized from 19-25 December 2011, the program was organized at Binh
Thuan province, which is famous for its high quality dragon fruit.
Under AIT’s coordination, 50 hectares of area will be developed on
pilot basis involving farmer co-operatives, the sub-department of plant
protection, besides experts from various organization including AIT,
Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and Bio-control Research
Laboratory (BCRL), India.
Vietnam and particularly the Bin Thuan province are concentrating
their efforts to produce clean and high quality dragon fruit, which is
exported to 16 countries, and will help nearly 16,000 households
involved in the dragon fruit trade.
The project is a part of a regional initiative coordinated by AIT,
Asian Fruit Fly Integrated Pest Management Project (http://ipm.ait.asia), which is being run
with support from International Cooperation and Development Fund,
Taiwan (www.icdf.org),in
collaboration with FAO and BCRL. The project involves the Ministry of
Agricultures in Mekong River basin countries (Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam,
Thailand and Myanmar). It seeks to refine ‘green solutions’ through
research, by using participatory approaches and extending Integrated
Pest Management (IPM) strategies to plant protection personnel to
enabling reduction of crop losses due to fruit flies.
Similar efforts on various commercially oriented horticultural crops
like guava, marian plum, mangoes, oranges, jujube and selected
vegetables are underway in other project countries like Cambodia,
Thailand and Laos. The project has also supported Nepal, Bangladesh,
Timor-Leste, Indonesia by involving plant protection experts in the
training programs. So far 300 farmers have been trained though the
weekly Farmer’s Field Schools (FFS) based training programs, while
another 1500 has benefitted from outreach efforts. The project has also
trained over 40 plant protection officials in these countries.
The project incorporates the basic mandate of AIT ‘Sustainable
Development in Context of Climate Change’ by using applied science for
development through involvement of all stakeholders.
The project has also developed a series a sites using GIS mapping,
developed innovative extension manuals and pest population monitoring
guides. Training curricula for a number of chosen crops in project
countries has also been developed.
Ms. Alma Linda Abubakar co-coordinated the training of behalf of FAO,
along with Dr. Prabhat Kumar, Senior Research Specialist, School of
Environment, Resources and Development (SERD), AIT and Coordinator and
IPM Export for Asian Fruit Fly IPM Project; and Mr. Ngo Tien Dung,
Deputy Director, PPD, MARD, Vietnam and National Coordinator for the
Asian Fruit Fly IPM Project. Local leadership and support was provided
by the provincial (Binh Thuan) Plant Protection sub-department director
Mr. Tran Minh Tien and technical support was facilitated by Dr. Nguyen
Huu Dat of Plant Quarantine Department, Ho-Chi-Minh city.
