The authorities’ strategy to check the alien giant mealybug with the use of pesticides has brought a little benefit as the plant-sucking insect continues spreading in different places, including the Jatiya Sangsad premises.
The parliament secretariat on April 26 sprayed pesticides to control the giant mealybug, strongly believed to have sneaked into Bangladesh with the equipment used by the Navy in Congo.
But the use of chemicals practically yielded no result as the white bug stages a comeback in the trees surrounding parliament building areas, killing other useful insects and organisms, polluting soil, air and water and ultimately causing harm to human health.
Experts said all mealybugs, including giant mealybug, cannot be exterminated completely through the use of pesticides. Nourishing and releasing parasites to counter the mealybug is an ultimate solution, they said.
Detected in 2007, India collected counter-parasites from the USA and successfully eliminated all mealybugs that destroy 60 types of crops and trees.
“The arboriculture (wing of the government) sprayed pesticides to kill the giant mealybug. Now, it comes again. We will call the arboriculture again to control it,” Ashraful Moqbul, senior secretary of the parliament secretariat, told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday.
In March last year, the Navy authorities reported to the Dhaka City Corporation and the plant protection wing of the government that a new alien insect attacked the Hazi Mohsin base in Dhaka’s Banani area.
The officials concerned and entomologists said giant mealybug, not seen in Bangladesh earlier, came here with the equipment deployed in the peacekeeping mission in Congo. Insecticides were used to destroy the insects.
In April this year, the same giant mealybug spread in Home Economics College in Dhaka, creating panic among the people.
The parliament authorities also detected the invasion of the same mealybug on its compound. The compound is not free from the bug, officials said.
“We will first try to check the spread of giant mealybug with some mild insecticides. Parasite is an ultimate solution,” Debashish Sarker, an entomologist and principal scientific officer of Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute, told the Dhaka Tribune.
Debashish has been involved in working out the solution to check the spread of giant mealybug.
He admitted that the use of pesticides to kill giant mealybug had some harms to the environment and the human health consequences. “We have to carry out research which parasites would work in our climatic conditions.”
The available literature shows that India has successfully eliminated all mealybugs in six years since such insects were detected in Tamil Nadu in 2007. The authorities collected parasites such as Acerophagus papaya, Anagyrus loecki and Pseudoleptomastix mexicana from the USA, ultimately controlling the onslaught of insect in almost similar climatic conditions.
“Why should we go for pesticides as it is an established fact that chemicals bring temporary solution? We have to use parasites to counter the spread of all mealybugs, including giant mealybug,” Ahsan Ullah, an entomologist at the government’s plant protection wing, told the Dhaka Tribune.
“We have to take lessons from India in the extermination of mealybugs,” said Ahsan who attended a special training programme on quarantine in India’s Hyderabad.
The pesticide wing of department of agriculture extension officials said a local company had applied for registration to market a pesticide styled Phytoclean to kill mealybugs. The company sought registration as the attacks of papaya mealybug, guava mealybug and other species infested plants across the country. The intrusion of giant mealybug has expedited the process of registration of the company to market the pesticide, officials said.