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Preventive Control

Natural enemies

Parasitoids

  1. Cephalonomia stephanoder is an African parasitoid wasp that parasitizes the eggs and pupae of coffee berry borer, CBB (Lauzière; Pérez-Lachaud; Brodeur, 2000).
  2. Heterospilus coffeicola is a braconid wasp that parasitizes the larvae of CBB. This is found in Uganda (CABI Commodities, 2002).
  3. Phymastichus coffea is a parasitoid that attacks the adult female CBB. It produces only one or two offspring per host but oviposits in about 20 hosts. This parasitoid was observed in West Kenya (CABI Commodities, undated).
  4. Prorops nasuta is a parasitoid wasp that attacks the larvae and pupae of CBB. This parasitoid is found in East Africa ( CABI Commodities, 2002).

Of the abovementioned parasitoids, C. stephanoderis and P. nasuta are now widely spread throughout Latin America. However, the control effectiveness is still under study. P. coffea is produced up to 10,000 per day at Cenicafé, Colombia. Field releases have been made in coffee plantations in Colombia but monitoring has to be done if these wasps are established in those coffee plantations. H. coffeicola has never been successfully reared in the laboratory (Pest Cabweb, 2002).

Pathogens

Beauveria bassiana is naturally occurring fungus found in the soils worldwide. It causes the 'white muscadine disease' in insects. When the spores come in contact with the skin of the host insect, they grow and consume the nutrients of the insect, eventually killing it. The white molds covering the insect's body are the new infected spores that are released to the environment (Mahr, 1997).

nB. bassiana is found to be attacking CBB adults (Baker, 1997), aphids, leafhoppers, mealybugs, mites, psyllids, thrips, weevils, whitefly, caterpillars and leaf-feeding insects (Moschetti, Undated), boll weevil, chinch bug, codling moth, Colorado potato beetle, European corn borer, fire ants, grasshoppers, Japanese beetle, lygus bugs, Mexican bean beetle, and termites (Mahr, 1997). B. bassiana is now commercially available agent for biological control against the abovementioned agricultural pests (Moschetti, Undated; Mahr, 1997) but it is not a cheap alternative to chemicals against CBB (Baker, 1997).

Monitoring

Inspect berry with small cylindrical hole. The damage is difficult to identify. To be sure, rub beans between the hands to see the small cut. Berries at the lower branches and those fallen on the ground are more likely the infested ones.

5% infested berries (CABI, 2000) is often used as an economic threshold for field control measures, but more studies are needed for this recommendation.

Cultural and management practices

  1. Collect all the remaining berries after harvest. This breaks the cycle of the pest. Coffee berry is the only known host of CCB.
  2. Collect fallen berries. Collected berries should be buried under. If sun-dried, place under fine nets smeared with grease or oil to capture escaping borers. Another option is to boil the collected berries for 5 minutes to make sure of killing the pest.
  3. Remove weeds to facilitate easy collection of fallen berries.
  4. Prune the lower unproductive branches of the coffee trees and the shade plants to create less favorable conditions for the multiplication of the borer.
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