Science-Driven and Farmer-Oriented Insect Pest Management for Cowpea Agro-Systems in West Africa
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EmailFrom the May 2024 Newsletter
Led by Dr. Manuel Tamo, International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) Benin
Cowpea is one of the most important grain legumes in West Africa, but its production remains threatened by insect pest which can severely reduce grain yields. To minimize their impact in cowpea cropping systems in Burkina Faso, Niger and Nigeria and redress yields, in this project we have been developing and deploying climate-resilient, environmentally friendly and economically profitable integrated pest management approaches and tools - easily implementable by women and men farmers. The project has been articulated around the following objectives:
1. Discovery objectives, to provide new knowledge on factors improving the performance of biocontrols and assess the pest status of emerging, climate-driven insect pests, along with the investigation into novel bio-pesticides.
2. Piloting objectives, to screen available or new biopesticides with potential to be commercialized by community-based groups and/or private sector operators, and to validate locally-specific IPM baskets.
3. Scaling objectives, to carry out mass-releases of biocontrol agents, and to scale out the community-based production of neem tea-bags.
4. Capacity development objectives, to implement training and educational programs at all levels, including farmer, technician and graduate training, and short-term attachments for researchers, to develop educational materials towards scaling of content, and to develop and validate ICT decision making tools.
The research approach has been anchored on seven pillars:
i) assessment of ecological interactions between the target pest organism (the legume pod borer), the released exotic biocontrol agents, and the cultivated (cowpea) and wild host plants flowering both during the cropping season and during the dry season;
ii) investigations of the in-field host finding capacity of the biocontrol agent Liragathis javana;
iii) biodiversity studies targeting emerging pests such flower thrips, in order to establish early-warning and rapid response approaches;
iv) screening of available and new isolates of entomopathogenic fungi to assess their efficacy on a range of cowpea pests, including those identified above as emerging ones;
v) socio-economic adoption, gender and impact studies to get better insight into determinants influencing IPM decisions at the household level, and to flank the scaling activities (with regard to biocontrol agents and neem tea-bags) in Burkina Faso and Niger;
vi) Sensitization campaigns at the locations where we carried out experimental (Nigeria) and mass releases (Burkina Faso and Niger) of hymenopteran parasitoids against the pod borer;
vii) development and validation of novel communication, education and decision-making approaches and tools to empower low-literacy farmers to take their own decisions with regard to cowpea pest control.
Click the link below to read the project achievements and complete final technical report.
