The Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), QU Dongyu, visited Mauritania's National Centre for Desert Locust Control today as part of a two-day visit to the northwestern African country. The Director-General was accompanied by Mauritania's Minister of Agriculture, His Excellency Umm Ould Bibateh, who underscored the importance of the visit in opening up promising horizons in the longstanding cooperation between Mauritania and FAO.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has called for ‘’robust coordination’’ between countries and regions in efforts to prevent and combat the scourge of desert locusts. “Desert locust – as migratory pest – cannot be controlled by one single country or one single entity,” FAO Deputy Director-General Beth Bechdol told participants at a high-level webinar today.

Experts at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) have called on countries to invest in prevention measures against the Banana Fusarium Wilt caused by Tropical Race 4 (TR4) as it is key to control and delay the spread of the disease into new areas.  

Banana cultivation in Tanzania is being threatened by the presence of the banana bunchy top disease (BBTD) first detected in 2020 in Kigoma region. The disease is widespread in susceptible cultivars in eleven major banana-growing regions: Arusha, Dar es Salaam, Dodoma, Geita, Katavi, Kigoma, Kilimanjaro, Mbeya, Morogoro, Mwanza, and Pwani.

The new equipment were transferred to Kakheti region and tested under field conditions. This is part of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)'s ongoing programme on locust management in the Caucasus and Central Asia implemented with USAID financial assistance. The equipment include four vehicles, entomological kits, binoculars, GPS, tablets, and computers, among others. 

Lack of appropriate locust monitoring and preparedness has been identified as major constraints that affect desert locust management. Other challenges include inaccessibility of some regions by vehicles or field officers due to lack of roads, difficult terrains, and insecurity.

Modern technology has much to offer for effective desert locust monitoring and control. This includes surveillance drones and their accompanying infrastructure technology, such as the system for data collection in the field and RAMSES (Reconnaissance And Management System of the Environment of Schistocerca), which is a custom software application comprising a database and a Geographic Information System (GIS) that stores the georeferenced results of survey and control operations.

In response to the outbreak of the coconut rhinoceros beetle in Majuro, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has taken action to mitigate the impact of the pest on food security and the livelihoods of the population.

The Marshall Islands government declared a state of emergency after discovering the beetle on the islands in September 2023.  

Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) delivered a module on locust morphology and taxonomy to students of the master’s in Acridology at the Institut Agronomique et Vétérinaire Hassan II (IAV) in Agadir, Morocco.

The course aimed to reinforce the knowledge of the first-year master’s students on the morphological features of insects, with a focus on acridids (locusts and grasshoppers) so that they can identify them at different stages of their development. The two-year master's programme will equip the field technicians with skills to implement sustainable preventive measures against locusts. 

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) conducted intensive training in desert locust survey and reporting for locust officers from Sudan, Uganda, and Ethiopia. This training was a follow up of a regional Training of Trainers course on desert locust survey and reporting techniques held last year.