IAPPS TEAMS UP WITH IITA AND SP-IPM IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA

The newly established Regional Network Center of the IAPPS for sub-Saharan Africa (Region III) will be hosted by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), with headquarters in Ibadan, Nigeria. By teaming up with IITA, the IAPPS will benefit from the Institute's thirty-year tradition of working in close association with plant protectionists, plant breeders and other agricultural development researchers in the region. Like other 'Future Harvest' agricultural research centers around the world, IITA's foundations were laid in the green revolution effort to breed higher-yielding crop varieties for the developing world. In this context, IITA has developed varieties that are resistant to many of the major crop pests and diseases of Africa - such as maize resistant to streak virus and cowpea resistant to flower thrips. The Institute's most recent success in this field has been to develop and deploy, in collaboration with its partners in East and Central Africa, varieties of cassava resistant to the newly emerged, and highly destructive, strain of African Cassava Mosaic Virus. IITA has also been a major advocate for the use of classical biological control in Africa. In the early 1980s, IITA established the Africa-wide Biological Control Programme whose initial campaign, led by Dr. Hans. Herren (now President of the IAPPS) and Dr. Peter Neuenschwander (currently Director of IITA's Plant Health Management Division) brought the introduced cassava mealybug successfully under control in over thirty countries. Building on this success, IITA and its partners have gone on to develop classical biological control strategies to tackle the cassava green mite and mango mealybug, as well as being active participants in regional projects to control floating water weeds and the larger grain borer. The Institute has also worked closely with CABI Bioscience to develop a fungus-based bio-pesticide for locusts and grass-hoppers, which is currently being used for the first time on a large scale against these pests in the Sahel. Putting together the lessons of its multi-disciplinary research over the years, IITA is now steadily developing and testing with farmers a series of integrated pest management (IPM) strategies for the major pests and diseases of Africa's basic food crops, such as maize, cassava, cowpea, plantains and bananas.

Given the Institute's strength in ecologically-based pest management, it was logical that when the international agricultural research centers set out, in 1994, to re-organize and strengthen their research agenda in the field of IPM, they looked to IITA for leadership. The Systemwide Program for IPM (SP-IPM) was launched at the beginning of 1996 with the goal of using new methodological approaches, backed by better communication and closer partnerships to make the IPM research of the Centers more effective - and, above all, more responsive to the needs of farmers. Dr. Lukas Brader, Director General of IITA and previously one of the leading advocates of IPM within the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), became program leader.

The SP-IPM set out to clarify research policy in a number of fields, focusing on contentious areas such as cereal stem borers and parasitic flowering plants, and seeking to give new emphasis to fields that were relatively neglected by the mainstream research agenda - such as management of weed problems in rice. In this context, the SP-IPM was particularly pleased to be able to establish its first major research project to look globally at the problems of managing whiteflies and whitefly-transmitted viruses in the tropics. Under the leadership of Dr. Pamela Anderson of the Centro Internacional de Agricultura Tropical (CIAT) in Colombia, this project has coordinated diagnostic work on whiteflies in many countries, from Latin America and the Caribbean, across Africa to South-East Asia.

Another important global initiative of the SP-IPM is looking at the issue of how best to use farmer participatory research methods. A close working relationship between farmers and researchers is now widely recognized as a key element in encouraging innovation and adoption of IPM, yet many research and development managers remain unsure how best to incorporate participatory methods into their programs. In collaboration with FAO's Global IPM Facility and the Systemwide Program on Participatory Research and Gender Analysis, the SP-IPM is currently organizing a series of study-exchanges between successful projects using different models of participatory research and learning. These exchanges will form the basis for a comparative analysis, expected to generate practical recommendations on how to choose and use the best participatory approaches to IPM available world-wide.

In Africa, the SP-IPM has this year launched a new initiative to encourage IPM adoption based on a series of 'pilot sites' in key agro-ecological zones. Six such sites are currently being established - in Kenya, Cameroon, Nigeria, Mali, Morocco and Egypt. At these sites, each managed by a different consortium of partner organizations but following a common approach, farmers, researchers and extensionists are putting their heads together to develop and evaluate their 'best bet' options for managing such destructive pests as Striga (witchweed) and cereal stem borers. In due course, these pilot sites are expected to become focal points for advocating the value of IPM to policy makers and the general public.

The coordinator of these SP-IPM activities is Dr. Richard Markham, an IPM enthusiast based at IITA's headquarters in Nigeria. By inviting the SP-IPM Coordinator to represent the Sub-Saharan Region, the IAPPS gains immediate access to this growing network of active plant protectionists across Africa. The IAPPS looks forward to a period of active growth in its membership and activities in Africa, where plant protection really is on the 'front line' of the development effort.

SPECIAL NOTICE:
IAPPS now has a secure credit card service (Visa, MasterCard, or American Express) for payment of individual membership fees through the IAPPS WebSite (click here). Log onto the Membership Application window in the WebSite, select the credit card option, and supply the requested information. All of the basic Membership Fee options in IAPPS include an annual subscription to the Electronic Edition of Crop Protection. The options for annual IAPPS memberships are:
$50 for industrialized Country Scientists
$35 for Developing Country Scientists
$30 for Students
An annual subscription to the Print Edition of Crop Protection can be added to either of the above options for an additional $50/year.

ASOCIACION LATINOAMERICANA DE FITOPATOLOGIA (ALF)

The Latin American Phytopathological Association (ALF) was founded in Lima, Peru in 1964. In 1965 it began publishing two issues annually of its journal "Fitopatología" which serves principally its Iberoamerican membership, publishing research manuscripts, reviews, and abstracts of papers presented at ALF biennial congresses, and those submitted by Latin American national plant pathological organizations. The languages of the region are used: Spanish, Portuguese, French and English. ALF is an Affiliate Member of IAPPS.

The next "Latin American Phytopathological Congress" (XI Congreso Latinoamericano de Fitopatología, joint with the XXXIV Congresso Brasileiro de Fitopatología) will be held August 5-10, 2001 in Sao Pedro (near Piracicaba), Sao Paulo State of Brazil where it is anticipated about one thousand will attend (members of both organizations). Membership is open to plant pathologists and others in related disciplines who are working in, or have an interest in, the geographic areas of ALF influence. ALF ADDRESS: Dr. E. R. French, Executive Secretary, Fitopatologia, CIP Apartado 1558, Lima 12, Peru. E-mail e.french@cgiar.org.

The IAPPS Newsletter is published by the International Association for the Plant Protection Sciences and distributed in Crop Protection to members and other subscribers. Crop Protection, published by Elsevier, is the Official Journal of IAPPS.

IAAPS Mission: to provide a global forum for the purpose of identifying, evaluating, integrating, and promoting plant protection concepts, technologies, and policies that are economically, environmentally, and socially acceptable.

It seeks to provide a global umbrella for the plant protection sciences to facilitate and promote the application of the Integrated Pest Management (IPM) approach to a the world's crop and forest ecosystems.

The IAPPS Newsletter welcomes news, letters, and other items of interest from individuals and organizations. Address correspondence and information to:

Dr. Nancy N. Ragsdale, Editor
IAPPS Newsletter
ARS/USDA
5601 Sunnyside Ave.
Beltsville, MD 20705-5140 USA
E-mail: nnr@ars.usda.gov