Jun 14, 2008
Sometimes you get lucky. At one time they offered to send me to Uganda to train the local staff in the mysteries of “plant protection”. Plant protection is the art of diagnosing the illnesses that crop plants are prone to get, and then advising the growers what they ought do about them.
At first the idea didn’t have much appeal for me. My knowledge of tropical plant pests was mostly thirty years old, and my knowledge of tropical plant diseases, or any plant diseases for that matter, could have been summarised on the back of a grain of rice. Furthermore, my experience of the professional staff trainers I had come across in the NZ Ministry of Agriculture, had led me to regard them with apprehension. They had a fund of terminology that would have frightened a stockbroker. Such expressions as “curriculum development”, “needs analysis” and “upskilling”, came so readily to their tongues that I felt that I belonged to a different and inferior race.
I said as much to Mr Badawi, the Lebanese at FAO headquarters in Rome who seemed to have been saddled with the Uganda project. He was not at all put out when I told him I thought he had the wrong man. “Come back tomorrow,” he said, “when you’re feeling better”, and I did.
He must have been hard pressed, for when I returned to him the following morning he was prepared to humour me, even to the extent of letting me make two visits to Uganda, (business class via Bangkok and Bombay, at $8 000 a time). On the first I would assess the problem and make some suggestions as to how it was best dealt with. All being well I would return a month later to conduct the actual training. How could I refuse?
Mind you, things still didn’t look good when I landed at the airport at Entebbe. There to one side of the tarmac, were the dismal and perforated remains of an airliner that Israeli commandos had shot up a couple of years previously, after some optimistic highjackers had taken it there. It’s paint was pealing, its tyres were flat and vines were beginning to climb up its undercarriage.
Inside the terminal things didn’t look much better. My promised contact, a Welsh plant pathologist stationed in Kampala, was nowhere to be seen, and I had neither his nor any other address to go to. Following the advice of an FAO consultant I had once had lunch with, I changed some money and asked a taxi driver to take me to the Hilton. “You mean the Sheraton,” he said. “Have it your own way.” I said, and we were soon at the Sheraton handing over a great bundle of 200 shilling notes to cover the $10 taxi fare.
The Welshman turned up the following day and said he’d been playing golf. I checked out of the Sheraton and got him to take me to a more sensible hotel where there were real people and a less clinically sterile atmosphere, where the food was less “international” and where the tariff was about a quarter as much. From there we went to the research station at Kawanda. There there was a New Zealander in charge. He was running some trials with improved food crops of various kinds, (tomatoes, beans, egg plant, casava etc.) because he quaintly believed it was more useful to get food into the bellies of the local populace than to help them to contribute further to the glut on the world markets for tea, coffee, and cocoa. Of course the Great Powers preferred to encourage the production of such exportable commodities, because it would further lower the world price for them, and at the same time it would earn the Ugandans a little foreign exchange with which they could service the debts they had already run up with the said Great Powers. Thus does Tanzania grow roses for the European market while its people live in shanty towns, and Ethiopia grows delphiniums on its best land while its people starve.
As is often the case with research stations, the crops at Kawanda exhibited pretty well all the pests and diseases that were available in those parts, so it struck me that the trial area could serve as an excellent laboratory for training staff in the science of plant protection. If you could learn to protect these crops, it would give you a good start with the protection of most others.
Next we went to the university at Makerere, where we met some of the staff of the Agriculture Faculty. They included a plant pathologist, (an African, not Welsh) who seemed familiar with a useful range of local plant disease problems. In my experience, most plant pathologists are at least eccentric, if not overtly mad, but this one was pretty normal. There was as well, an entomologist, also an African. I asked them about literature on the local diseases and pests, and asked if I could see their library. That depressed them somewhat, and they explained that most of the books in the library consisted only of the covers, the students having removed the pages for their own use.
In fact books of any sort were in short supply. But they told me that a book on “Pests and Diseases of Tropical Crops” had recently been published by Longmans, and they showed me a copy. It was most encouraging. It had been put together by Makerere University as a project funded by the Rockefeller Foundation. They had got hold of a couple of English scientists who between them had a lot of experience in tropical plant protection, and many useful contacts in the field. They had produced a sensible, practical, well illustrated guide covering all the tropical crops you were ever likely to be concerned with. With a book like that to refer to, and a basic knowledge of field and laboratory technique, almost anyone with a modicum of intelligence, ought to be capable of dealing with most of the plant protection problems they were likely to encounter. As the trainees were all to be university graduates in agriculture, it seemed that if each of them had a copy of the book, that would be a good start. I suggested in my report that the Welshman might order a copy for each trainee.
The next thing in training is preparation. I wanted if possible, to avoid surprises when it came to the actual course. I gathered up my university colleagues, and the Welshman, and we did a survey of the crop area at the research station to see what pests and diseases we could expect to find. There were plenty, a good assortment covering most of the crops they had growing. I particularly remember the aphids on the beans, because the African entomologist taught me a clever trick.
There are many ways of catching insects and the picture that most people have of a balding professor with heavy spectacles, stumbling over thistles with his gaze fixed on a butterfly and a net in his hand, is not very typical. Most insects don’t fly in daylight and can’t be readily seen at night. Some insects can be lured into traps, using bait or scent or bright light, while others will blindly stumble into containers buried with the rim at ground level. Others can be shaken from branches onto a white cloth, and others again have to be discovered where they are feeding, and gathered from there.
Picking up tiny insects without damaging them is tricky enough at the best of times. It is customary to use for the purpose a little device called an aspirator. It consists of a transparent canister ( one of the containers that photographic films come in will do), with a piece of clear plastic tubing projecting from each end. You apply the end of one tube to the insect or insect colony, and suck through the other so that they are drawn up into the canister. (A piece of gauze over the sucking tube prevents them from carrying on into your mouth and lungs). You can then introduce some fumigant or preservative into the canister, and the insects are ready for microscopic examination or whatever else you have in mind for them.
Aphids, or greenfly if you prefer to call them that, feed by drinking the juice of plants. They have a little trunk which they apply to the surface of the stem or leaf, and out of it they extend a pair of very fine stilettos which work their way into the plant until they reach and puncture the cells that carry the sugary nutrients. Between these two stilettos they then insert a pair of extremely fine tubes. Down one of the tubes they force a potent digestive juice which liquifies the cell contents, and then drives the dissolved material up the other tube into the aphid’s stomach. It is a good system, but it means that the head of the aphid is quite firmly attached to the plant, so if you try to pick the aphid off with your aspirator, you are likely to leave its head behind. This diminishes its value when it comes to microscopic examination.
The trick my African colleague taught me was this: If you take a piece of grass stem and squash a few aphids at one end of the colony, the smell of their misfortune will lead the remaining aphids to believe that the colony is under attack by ladybirds or something, They will then voluntarily withdraw their stilettos, and gaze about wild eyed in alarm, waving their antennae and wondering desperately, which might be the best way to run. At this juncture, you apply your aspirator and bingo! They are in the can. I tried it and it works.
I also asked in my report, for the Welshman to order pocket lenses of 10 times magnification, for each of the 23 trainees. Unfortunately he, believing that if one is good two is better, ordered 50 books, and 50 lenses of 20 times magnification.
Before I went back to Uganda to conduct the training course, I called on a friendly photographer in Sandringham, and scrounged 30 or so film containers. I also bought a few yards of clear plastic tubing from Payless Plastics, and scrounged some offcuts of satin from my wife. At the beginning of the course, each participant was then shown how to make an aspirator for his or her own use, and was provided with a pocket lens and a book. Judging from the miserable salaries they were paid, I should think these were the only pieces of technical equipment they had ever possessed.
The course went off quite well, - or at least the trainees seemed to think so. It was opened with a good deal of pomp and ceremony by the Minister of Agriculture. He arrived an hour late, due to some misunderstanding, but we gave him a copy of the book anyway, since we had a surplus.
But the centre piece of the course was the collection under the guidance of the university staff, and using aspirators where appropriate, of pest and disease specimens in the food crop trial plots. These they took back to an improvised lab, and again with the help of the university specialists, the books, the lenses, and even the Welshman, they were able to identify for the first time, many common plant pests and diseases, and read about them in their books. By the end of the course they could recognise unaided, many common plant pests and diseases, understand the circumstances which might favour their spread, and determine what to do to minimise their impact.
I think you learn best by teaching yourself and by helping one another.