Greenpeace violators of Bt Eggplant Trial to be Persecuted for Malicious Mischief (SEARCA BIC News Release)
Greenpeace members led by Daniel Ocampo who trespassed and destroyed the experimental site of the fruit and shoot borer resistant (FSBR) Bt eggplant in the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB) last February 17, 2011 are to be prosecuted for malicious mischief by the Provincial Prosecution Office of Laguna Province. Among those to be charged include Indian nationals Shavani Shah and Ali Abbas of Greenpeace. Both joined Ocampo and his team in vandalizing the legitimate experiment.
Integrated Pest Management of the Eggplant Fruit and Shoot Borer
Solanum melongena is indeed an important vegetable and it has a variety of fruit shapes and colors. Fruit length ranges from 4 to 45 cm with thickness varying from 2 to 35 cm at different shapes (round to elongated). Individual fruit weights could be as light as 15 to 1500 g while fruit color ranges from white to dark purple (Swarup, 1995).
Yield of eggplant farmers is highly challenged not just by culture practices but by pests such as eggplant fruit and shoot borer (EFSB) (Alam et al., 2003), leafhopper, whitefly, thrips, aphid, spotted beetles, leaf roller, stem borer, blister beetle, red spider mite, and little leaf disease (Srinivasan, 2009). Among these pests, EFSB was found to be most destructive which causes up to 70% yield reduction (Alam et al., 2003) and to combat this pest, farmers spend 14.2% of their capital on pesticides (Briones, 2009). Because of the costs in current practices of controlling EFSB, it is therefore important to find alternative solutions in controlling it such as an integrated pest management system based on the available resources in the region. This includes the minimal use of available pesticides, the use of local plants as botanical pesticides, and to encourage crop rotation using other vegetables, which can be grown profitably, because successive cropping of the same species is generally not good for IPM.