Plant scientists advocate bio techniques for pest, diseases control

 

The 40^th Annual Conference of the Nigerian Society for plant protection recently held in Abuja with the “theme sustainable plant protection for National Development, Prospect and Challenges” has emphasized on the use of bio friendly measures to control pest and diseases in plants saying this will enhance healthy intakes of foods free of toxic residues.    

    

It was posited that plants give some nasty and unbearable reaction in our body system as a result of chemical reaction, which has made the Nigerian Society for plant protection to look forward to the use of biology control, which are “using botanicals, in controlling pest and diseases, which are environment friendly, they are non-pathogenic, they are no path toxic, and they are not pollutant.

Speaking at the Conference, the National President of the Nigerian Society for Plant Protection, Professor David Babatunde Olufolaji from the Federal University of Akure, a plant Pathologist said scientists should encourage the use of bio methods by farmers in the controlling of pest and diseases for the purpose food safety and food security adding that “, the customary things has been the use of  chemical to control pest and diseases, but it was discovered that, some chemicals may proffer pathogenic ability, as they might pollute the environment as they are not environment friendly and are also path toxic, as they have residues on plants”

The soil pathologist said individual research needs to be coordinated towards helping the society to come together to showcase their researches just as he  clamored for farmers driven research which is looking into farmers who have problems with diseases on a particular crop pointing that members of the society  should be tailored towards such a problem.

Prof. Babatunde said, the Nigerian Society for plant protection has been able to control pest and disease through many researchers that are scattered across the country in all universities of  agriculture stressed that “Nigerian Society for plant protection have been able to  access the pathogencity level of diseases, its severity and the model used in accessing if the pest is able to be controlled  or not, after which it is taken into the laboratory, to check it capacity, then preferring solution  by looking forward, experimenting, the use of botanicals, chemicals to know which is anti-fungi to the particular fungi that causes the disease, if it’s a bacterial, anti-bacterial will be used and  if its anti-nematodes, anti-nematodes will be used to checkmate the biological control”