YOGYAKARTA – Huanglongbing or CVPD (Citrus Vein Phloem Degeneration) is a disease in citrus’s plant that is very significant and is a new emerging infectious plant disease, thus it became the world’s attention because Huanglongbing has been very detrimental in many citrus production centers in Asia, Africa and America. As a result of disease’s infection that spreads through vegetative propagation and transmission by vectors insect Diaphorina citri Kuway, citrus fruit production will experience a drastic decline in both quantity and quality before the plant is totally dead within 2 – 4 years.
According to pests and plant diseases expert from Faculty of Agriculture, UGM, Prof. Dr. Ir. Siti Subandiyah, M. Agr., symptoms resulting from infection of the disease are similar to symptoms caused by lack of nutrients. Usually, farmers are reluctant to remove the plants that have been infected and still maintain them through cultivation and expect to harvest the fruit even though it can only be made into orange juice.
"The presence of infected trees in the field became a source of transmission of the disease and causes the disease to continue to spread by vector insects," said Siti, Tuesday (22/2).
Furthermore, said Siti, citri has a host range and live in some kind of plant of Rutaceae families, besides citrus, including kemuning, kingkit orange, curry leaves etc which are usually planted as a fence or ornamental plants that often escape from eradication measures. CVPD control programs become increasingly complex because they must be conducted in integrative manner due to the complexity of interaction between host plants, pathogens bacteria, the vector insect behavior as well as habits or behaviors of citrus farmers in the cultivation process, thus involving various stake holders that are not easy to work with.
"Thus, the current focus is the CVPD controls program that is more integrated and more complex," she explained.
Related to the CVPD, Faculty of Agriculture for six years since 2003 has worked with the University of Western Sydney (UWS) and completed Huanglongbing Management research project for Indonesia and Australia. The activity was conducted through the funding from ACIAR (Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research) with the project leader, Prof. Andrew Beattie and Indonesian principle investigator, Prof. Siti Subandiyah, with members including Prof. Paul Holford, Prof. Susamto Somowiyarjo, and Prof. Andi Trisyono.
"The study involved several S-2graduate students and S-3 at UGM as well as UWS," Siti explained. After about 2 years of research the project ended, Siti said, the research team managed to get the funding to conduct a Master Class, an activity of Training Workshop from Crowford Fund and the Faculty of Agriculture UGM as a major host of the program. Program participants consisted of 45 people including experts and trainers from 16 countries (Australia, Brazil, Butan, Cambodia, China, Fiji, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Pakistan, Thailand, Timor Leste, Tonga, USA, and Vietnam). The master class program will be held for 2 weeks consisting of 2 days activities in East Java with a visit to Balitjestro (Research Institute for Citrus and Subtropical Fruit) in Batu Malang and citrus plantation belonging to farmer groups in Jember. In addition, there are also activities organized in the Faculty of Agriculture and field trips to citrus plantation in Purworejo and Magelang, Central Java.
The activities in the Faculty of Agriculture consist of, among others, presentations and discussion involving all participants, observation for diagnosis and detection of other CVPD and pests pathogens of citrus, either morphologically using a microscope, serologically using ELISA, as well as molecularly by PCR and Realtime- PCR.
"Since February 20, the participant have already been in East Java, before later attending the opening at the Faculty of Agriculture, February 24, tomorrow," said the professor who is also the model lecturer of the Faculty of Agriculture in 1991.
Through this program, said Siti, it is expected to provide benefits to all parties to analyze and discuss a more precise control of diseases. Siti further added that the Master Class of Crowford Fund is also expected to build strong networking among the various stakeholders involved.
Plans are also underway for a meeting to arrange cooperation between UGM and attendees from Florida Dept. of Agriculture, USA and Director of the National Directorate of Agriculture and Horticulture and the Secretary of State for Agriculture and Arboriculture, Ministry Of Agriculture and Fisheries of Timor Leste