Tomato pests attack: Experts say it is tuta absoluta

It was discovered that the disease, known as Tuta Absoluta, has the ability to destroy a whole tomato farm within 48hours.It is on this backdrop that AgroNigeria limited organized a town hall meeting with agricultural stakeholders in Kano state as part of its rapid measure taking techniques taken to find a way out of the […]

It was discovered that the disease, known as Tuta Absoluta, has the ability to destroy a whole tomato farm within 48hours.
It is on this backdrop that AgroNigeria limited organized a town hall meeting with agricultural stakeholders in Kano state as part of its rapid measure taking techniques taken to find a way out of the predicament faced by tomato farmers in the country.
The meeting which took place at the conference hall of Chimande Agricultural Seeds Nigeria Limited, Kano, was attended by major players in the Nigerian tomato value chain as well as other important stakeholders in tomato production in the country.
Participants at the meeting expressed concern that the tomato plague had come to the country unnoticed and caught both  farmers and the government unawares. They also agreed that there is need for governments to as a matter of urgency come to farmers aid to save the situation.
Speaking at the meeting, Chief Executive Officer AgroNigeria, Mr. Richard Mark Mbaram, stated that the latest research conducted has identified the recent pest attack on tomatoes as tuta absoluta, adding that Nigerian tomato production is under siege and that steps need to be taken to prevent a re-enactment of what happened in Sudan, where it took that country about three years to recover from the crop disease.
Syngenta campaign management specialist, Hamza Mahuta, stated that tuta absoluta is a very challenging pest to control and also has very high mutation capacity with capability of developing insecticide resistance strains.
“It is indeed a very devastating attack; the good news here is that effective pesticide is expected to be in Nigeria by October this year.
History has shown that it took Sudan three years to recover from such attack and we would not want a similar situation to happen in Nigeria,” said Mahuta.
In his reaction, the Chief Executive Officer of Chimade Seed Nigeria Limited, Alhaji Yusuf Ado Kibiya, noted that the level of destruction caused by the plague was unquantifiable.
“It is apparent that the largest percentage of tomato is being produced here in Kano and Jigawa where we produce about 75 per cent of the total tomato consumed in Nigeria. Many farmers may have not noticed this attack in Kano, due to inexperience and poor technicalities to identify the attack. But as we speak today tomato farmers are counting their losses due to this scourge and we cannot quantify the amount of loss recorded so far,” Kibiya also said.