No insect pest evokes such deep and dark foreboding among coconut
farmers in the CALABARZON Region as this scourge.
Identified
in 2011 to be a coconut scale insect or Aspidiotus destructor (Signoret),
it is parasitic in nature and uses the sun and wind to reproduce in great
numbers and travel long distances. Later, the species was found out to be closely
related to A. destructor, one that caused a similar outbreak in Indonesia
sometime ago.
Dr. Candida
B. Adalla, Crop Protection Cluster project team leader of the College of
Agriculture at the University of the Philippines Los Baños (UPLB), described CSI
as a mere 1.2 mm in diameter.
Even if
minute in size, Adalla said that, “A single
female, during the hot and humid months, can lay as many as 250 eggs during its
32-day life cycle.”
Thus, a
square inch of coconut leaf may contain, at any given point in time, as many as
448 females. Because of its size, the underside of a single leaflet alone measuring
3 inches in diameter and 60 cm long may contain an aggregate of some 2.4
million.
It is
not thus surprising that coconut farmers describe CSI, dispersed during windy
days, as a wide expanse of soot, so fine that they appear to be a nondescript,
billowy, ecru swathe. Their immense number make them appear to be very pale brown in color.
Adalla
added, “Only adult females stay immobile and
permanently attached to a coconut palm even after its death, all the while secreting
a waxy covering for defense that resembles fish scales hence the name.”
(DOST IV-A Dispatch 2014)
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