The Coconut Development Authority has revealed that the damage caused by white flies that have spread around the country’s coconut plantations in the past has had a severe impact on the king coconut plantations.
Especially since the whitefly is strongly attracted to the yellow colour, the damage of the whitefly has affected the king coconut plantation more than the coconut cultivation.
The Coconut Development Authority officials informed Agriculture and Plantation Industries Minister Mahinda Amaraweera in a discussion held at the Ministry on Friday (14) that there has been a 36 percent decrease in king coconut exports due to this damage.
The dry weather condition with long drought in the past years caused the spread of whitefly to worsen.
The Agriculture and Plantation Industries Ministry took steps to apply Margosa oil extract to coconut and king coconut plantations to control the white fly last year, at a cost of Rs. 80 million, so it was possible to avoid the huge crop damage that happened.
However, due to the current rain condition this year, the spread of the whitefly has greatly reduced, so coconut and king coconut cultivation is recovering.
As the farmers get a lot of income from king coconut export, there is currently a shortage of ripe king coconut needed to prepare king coconut plants.
As planned to establish 160 youth Agri-entrepreneurship villages under the Agriculture and Plantation Industries Ministry to cover each district, the Minister has requested the Coconut Development Authority and Advised the Cultivation Board to establish one project in each district to prepare king coconut saplings.
Currently, 200 containers of king coconut i.e. 15 million king coconut are exported per year and one king coconuts exported from Sri Lanka for Rs. 250.
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