U.N. agency plan targets pests and plant diseases

A U-N agency has come up with new ways to help eradicate plant diseases and pests which are introduced to new environments.

According to  the U-N Food Agriculture Organization, an estimated 10-to-16 per cent of the global harvest is lost to plant pests each year — a loss estimated at 220-billion, dollars U-S.

Experts call crop pests “dangerous hitchhikers” which can wreak havoc by jumping borders through trade in infected fruits, crops, seeds and even ornamental plants.

New measures include a stronger standard for the use of heat vapour to kill oriental fruit flies — a technique which kills 99.98 per cent of the bug’s eggs and larvae.

Another is cold treatment techniques that freeze and kill pests and those that raise temperatures past their survival threshold.

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The measures were introduced this week at the annual meeting of the International Plant Protection Convention in Rome.