According to recent research, East Africa could be facing the threat of a citrus fruit sap-sucking pest with the potential to collapse its entire regional fruit industry. The pest is called the Asian citrus psyllid and it transmits the bacterium that causes citrus greening disease, which deforms fruits and reduces their commercial value enormously. According to the FAO, the disease - which causes crop losses of up to 100 per cent - is the most devastating citrus disease globally because of how fast it spreads, the difficulty of diagnosing it and the damage it causes. Smallholders are the hardest hit because they lack the capital to manage the disease, the FAO adds. Sunday Ekesi, director of research and partnerships at the Kenya-headquartered International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology, also called 'icipe': "The icipe is working closely with relevant regulatory authorities and providing them with methods, tools and technologies such as traps, attractants, sampling design and methods to monitor and detect the pest early to guide intervention and minimise spread.” "We are advocating efforts to keep the pest out of a geographical area that it has not invaded… and implementing intense management measures to keep the insect population low and curtail spread." In a recent interview, Ekesi said that in East Africa the pest which was first detected in Ethiopia in 2010. But scientists also detected the pest in Tanzania and Kenya in 2015 and 2016 respectively. "The Asian citrus psyllid can survive in both high and low climate areas because it can tolerate temperatures up to 30^oCelsius as opposed to the African psyllid that is sensitive to heat and can only develop at temperatures between 22 to 25^oCelsius," explains Ekesi. If the matter is not looked into, then within five years we are going to have an epidemic of the Asian citrus psyllid across Africa. Source - https://www.freshplaza.com