Decades after being found as a plant disease, ganoderma is still one of the most challenging issues facing Indonesia’s oil palm growers in improving their productivity and sustainability, a webinar on ganoderma boninense concluded on Wednesday.
The webinar, which is about ganoderma boninense, damages it causes and how to prevent it, was organized by the Indonesian Oil Palm Association (Gapki) and addressed by three speakers, namely Darmono Taniwiryono Phd. (Roundtable Ganoderma Management), Andi Suwignyo (General Manager of PT Socfin Indonesia), and Agus Susanto Phd (Senior researcher of Oil Palm Research Center –PPKS), and moderated by Mukti Sardjono, the executive director of Gapki.
The ganoderma boninense is a white rot fungi which causes an oil palm disease called Basal Root St em (BSR). The disease, which is still incurable as there is no effective method or remedy to eradicate it until now, causes a decay to the lower stem of oil palm tree and then leads to the collapse of the oil palm trees. In most severe cases, the disease can cause the reduction of productivity up to 50 percent.
Addressing the webinar, which was opened by Gapki Chairman Joko Supriyono and closed by Gapki Deputy Chairman Togar Sitanggang, Darmono Taniwiryono said that there are various mode of infection of the disease in oil palm plantations. “But usually, the most common modes of infection are through contacts of roots with nearby diseased oil palm trees and through airborne basidiospores,” he said.
Andi Suwignyo said that his company first found the disease in Serdang Badagai, North Sumatra province, in 1954, which is possibly the first case found in Indonesia or even in South East Asian region, where Indonesia and Malaysia have become respectively the world’s first largest producer and the second largest producer of crude palm oil (CPO). Globally, it was known to have infected the oil palm plantations in 1915 when it was first found in Congo, Africa.
Agus Susanto said that it is hard to detect the disease in oil plam plantations. Initially the Ganoderma disease was only found in the third generation of oil palm plantations, but now even it had infected the second and first generations. “In the second generation, we found cases of the disease at between 3-4 percent. Then in the third generation, it reached up 50 percent,” he said.
All of the speakers said that even there are oil palm seedlings that are infected with the Ganoderma disease. “Growers who want to conduct replanting program in their plantations should ensure that they should get quality seedlings that are free from the disease,” he said.
Andi said that in several cases, a number of growers have to do replanting half-way through the economic cycle of their plantations due to the severe condition of disease that infected their still productive oil palm trees.
He added that actually, growers should choose the seedlings that can be resistant or tolerant with the Ganoderma disease.
But they said that in case of being infected, growers should find out the real condition facing their own plantations, whether the disease only infects certain trees or already endemic in certain areas of their plantations.
Darmono said that in case of only certain trees, then they can be uprooted to ensure no contact with other trees. In case of endemic areas, they should be isolated with dug trenches filled with water.
Andi concluded that there are two steps that should be taken by the growers to prevent the Ganoderma disease. First, the growers should ensure the quality of their seedlings, which should be tolerant to the disease. Second, in case of being infected, growers should totally eradicated the Ganoderma boninense from the land suspected to be already infected. (*)
Featured image via pindainews.com
