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White Flies disease in Coconut plantation reduces king coconut exports

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The Coconut Development Authority has revealed that the damage caused by white flies that have spread around the island’s coconut plantations in the past has had a severe impact on the island’s king coconut plantations.

Especially since the whitefly is strongly attracted to the yellow color, the damage of the whitefly has affected the king coconut plantation more than the coconut cultivation.

Officials of the Coconut Development Authority informed Minister Mahinda Amaraweera in a discussion held at the Ministry of Agriculture and Plantation Industry yesterday (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.

In the year 2023, the Ministry of Agriculture and Plantation Industries took steps to apply Margosa oil extract to coconut and king coconut plantations to control the white fly at a cost of 80 million rupees, so it was possible to avoid the huge crop damage that happened.

Also, due to the current rain condition this year, the spread of the whitefly has greatly reduced, so coconut and king coconut cultivation is recovering.

However, as the farmers get a lot of income from the export of king coconut, there is currently a shortage of ripe king coconut needed to prepare king coconut plants.

Therefore, as currently planned to establish 160 youth Agri-entrepreneurship villages under the Ministry of Agriculture and Plantation Industries to cover each district, the Minister of Agriculture and Plantation Industries Mr. Mahinda Amaraweera has requested the Coconut Development Authority and the 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 250 rupees.

The post White Flies disease in Coconut plantation reduces king coconut exports appeared first on DailyNews.

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