Tag Archives: pests

A look at the ‘dry skin’ problem in yams

Michael James for the 7th Annual Conference of the BSTA 1989

‘Dry Skin’ or dry rot in yams is a disease found wide-spread in Barbados on the yam cultivars currently being grown here and indeed on nearly all the varieties of Dioscorea spp.

The causal agent is a nematode, Pratylenchus coffae which seems to work in association with a fungal organism and the disease causes both quantitative and qualitative damage to harvested tubers. (Brathwaite & Hutton, 1980)

A look at the ‘dry skin’ problem in yams pdf

Susceptibility of sugarcane varieties to thrips in Barbados

Louis E. Chinnery, Sandra R. Bellamy, Maria M.H. Agard, Nigel McA. Scott, Amina Adam, Michael P. Smith, Deryck S. Murray and Trudy Small for the 7th Annual Technical Conference of the BSTA 1989

In Barbados sugarcane is attacked by several pest species of varying economic importance. Of these the sugarcane moth-borer, Diatraea saccharalis (Fabri cius), the sugarcane root-borer, Diaprepes abbreviatus (Linnaeus), and the white grubs of the brown hardback, Clemora (=Phyllophaga) smithi (Arrow), are the most important (Alleyne, 1983; Alam and Gibbs, 1988). Currently, Diatraea is under effective biological control (Alleyne, 1983) but Diaprepes and Clemora are still problematic especially in the low rainfall areas after prolonged drought years (Alam and Gibbs, 1988). However some promising results have been achieved with an entomogenous nematode, Neoplectana (=Steinernema) glasseri, against both of these pests (Alam and Gibbs, 1988).

Susceptibility of sugarcane varieties to thrips in Barbados pdf