Professor of IPB: Monoculture Agriculture was Susceptible of Pest Attack

Professor of Plant Protection of Faculty of Agriculture of Bogor Agricultural University (IPB), Prof.Dr.Ir. Meity Suradji Sinaga, said, the extensive rice cultivation with the same varieties would form the monoculture system which had a weakness namely easily having been disease epidemics. Blast had just attacked the upland rice, not the lowland rice which was destroyed by blast. This was due to the monoculture.

“If widely grown crop varieties, it will provide a high pressure on pathogen. This will cause the genetic changes in the pathogen, so that it causes the virulent pathogen,” she said in the press conference of the pre oration in Campus of IPB Baranangsiang Bogor, (6/10).

The epidemic was a disease development in the population of plant/area/time. Blast had a high-speed development, so before the crop production, the plant had been destroyed, because the blast attacked the leaves.

“Besides that, the current condition in which the forest is burnt to expand the oil palm plantation, is a monoculture system. Just imagine if throughout Indonesia it is replaced by oil palm, cocoa and coconut are replaced by oil palm. Then the monoculture occurs and the genetic diversity is very little. Now look how the oil palm dies because of ganoderma,” she said.

Rice could be tricked because of the kinds of rice varieties. We could make the small plants with the multiple varieties, so that it could break the monoculture system, she added.

Biological control had been available naturally. In the natural ecosystem, the biological control had been already happening by itself. Because of the human intervention (the cultivation process was not environmentally friendly), so the agent into the biological source became extinct. “That’s what we see with the narrow diversity and the abundance is getting smaller which makes the biological control agent not be active anymore. It is time we return to the environmentally friendly control,” she added.

Since 1970, the concept of biological control began to be accepted and applied to the cultivation of various crops, although the effectiveness of the control toward the Plant Pest Organism (OPT) was not as fast as pesticides. Biological Control Agent (APH) of plant diseases were living things, therefore for the development and utilization of APH it was necessary high caution especially in the identification of APH and the correct understanding.