TARO PEST

By ACIAR

Taro (Colocasia esculente), which is a major food crop in the South Pacific, is subject to significant losses from pests and diseases. Most South Pacific taro pests have restricted distributions, making effective quarantine critical to their containment and management. Identifying pests already in a country is an ongoing requirement for growers, extension officers and those responsible for trying to gain international market access for the crop. Lack of user-friendly diagnostic tools, however, means that effective quarantine, pest management and pest surveillance are severely hampered.To overcome these problems, TaroPest has been developed as a guide to the pests and diseases of taro in the South Pacific. Its aim is to be a one-stop shop for pests of taro, with keys, fact sheets, photographs and other supporting information.

TaroPest captures all available information pertinent to the identification and management of taro pests and diseases in the South Pacific region. Although
we found that much is known about a small group of the insects and diseases attacking taro,TaroPest also highlights that, for the majority, little or nothing is known about their economic or biological impact, differences in susceptibility between different taro cultivars, and control methods. More research on these topics is needed.

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Published by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR)
GPO Box 1571, Canberra ACT 2601, Australia Telephone: 61 2 6217 0500
aciar@aciar.gov.au