Nghe An: Focus on preventing rice blast disease

Risk of disease causing serious harm

In the 2022 spring crop, the whole province planted over 91,664 hectares of rice. In recent times, the weather has been unfavorable, with alternating sunshine and rain creating favorable conditions for the outbreak of rice blast disease. The whole province has had over 5,000 hectares affected by the disease, of which more than 416 hectares were severely infected and nearly 18 hectares were "burned", completely losing productivity. Therefore, localities are focusing on directing communes to closely follow the fields, divide the areas, and divide the rice season to organize timely preventive spraying.

In previous years, Mr. Nguyen Dinh Than's family in Hamlet 6, Dai Son Commune, Do Luong District hardly needed to spray pesticides to prevent rice blast disease, but this spring he had to carry the sprayer to the field 5 times.

“This year, I switched to planting 2 sao of AC5 and TBR225 rice, but it got severely infected with rice blast disease. Only 1 sao of rice planted with another variety was less affected. In the village, many houses had to spray 4-5 times,” said Mr. Than.

Blast disease on spring rice in Hung Nguyen district. Photo: Phu Huong

Currently, more than 7,600 hectares of spring rice in Do Luong district are in the stage of heading to flowering. The whole district has 88 hectares of rice infected with leaf blast disease, and worryingly, this year the weather is very favorable for the disease to develop. In the area, there are about 1,000 hectares of rice producing susceptible varieties such as TBR 222, AC5, Thien Uu 8, many rice fields are sown very densely without thinning despite recommendations, and care is not balanced.

According to Mr. Nguyen Kim Ngoc - Deputy Director of the District Agricultural Service Center, the time when Do Luong's spring rice crops are concentrated will likely have favorable weather conditions.rice blast diseaseIn order to prevent the occurrence of harmful rice plants, the district is focusing on directing communes to closely follow the fields, divide the areas, and divide the rice fields to organize timely spraying. From April 10 to 20, about 1,000 hectares will be in bloom in the area. After April 20, the district will continue to focus on strong direction because basically the spring rice area of ​​Do Luong will be in bloom during that period.

Do Luong farmers spray rice fields that have been damaged by rice blast disease. Photo: Phu Huong

In Yen Thanh, in addition to 1,000 hectares that bloomed before April 10, the district has up to 7,000 hectares of rice blooming concentratedly from April 10 to 20, the remaining area blooming after April 20.

Vice Chairman of the District People's Committee - Mr. Nguyen Van Duong said: Yen Thanh has been determined to implement the prevention of rice blast disease early. The directive was issued in early April to promptly prevent it from the first rice fields. "The current problem is that farmers still do not follow the recommendations of the authorities, buy cheap drugs according to the advice of stores, and when spraying, mix in other stimulants and fungicides. Therefore, we direct to focus on checking and correcting thepesticide businessIn the area, propagate and guide farmers to prevent properly, with the right medicine, limit the situation of people using medicine not according to recommendations, using it incorrectly, reducing the effectiveness of prevention.

Focus on timely prevention

According to information from the Department of Crop Production and Plant Protection, it is expected that the whole province will have about 37,000 hectares of rice blooming before April 20. The concentrated blooming time of rice crops is in the next 10 days, from April 15 to 25.

According to forecasts, the weather will be complicated, the rice flowering time may have rain, cloudy sky, high humidity, fog at night and morning, which are favorable conditions for pests to arise and cause damage on the rice fields.spring rice; especially this is the stage of spring rice flowering and drying, which will be favorable conditions for the occurrence of rice blast disease and black-grain disease. If not regularly checked, not detected or detected late and not controlled promptly, the disease will easily spread widely.

Leaders of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development inspect the rice blast disease situation on spring rice. Photo: Phu Huong

In fact, rice fields that have been damaged by leaf blast, or rice fields that produce infected varieties that have been infected every year, are at high risk of being severely damaged by neck blast disease. However, according to Mr. Trinh Thach Lam - Head of Plant Protection Department, Department of Crop Production and Plant Protection, even rice fields that have been well-protected and not infected with leaf blast are still susceptible to neck blast disease, because this is a disease that depends a lot on weather factors.

Farmers should note that in rice fields producing disease-susceptible varieties, the lesions are often diamond-shaped, green when they first appear and turn yellow when the disease becomes more severe; when the lesions spread, they will be ash-gray, surrounded by brown and with a yellow halo in the middle. These are typical symptoms to distinguish them from other diseases on rice such as fire smut, brown spots, etc.

However, on non-sensitive rice varieties, there will be no definite shape, the traces will be smaller so it is necessary to check carefully to be able to prevent in time.

Mr. Trinh Thach Lam - Head of Plant Protection Department, Department of Crop Production and Plant Protection

Rice blast is a very dangerous disease on rice plants and depending on the severity of the disease, it can affect productivity, even losing 100% of the yield. To proactively prevent and minimize damage, localities and related sectors need to propagate, direct and guide farmers to prevent and control it effectively.

It is necessary to closely monitor the weather during the time when the rice starts to flower until it is fully flowered. If during this time, the weather conditions are favorable for the disease to develop, such as high humidity, rain, cloudy weather, and prolonged fog, it is necessary to immediately organize disease prevention spraying with specific drugs with active ingredients as recommended.

Spray when the rice begins to bloom 3-5% of the panicle and spray again when the rice has fully bloomed if the weather conditions continue to be favorable for the disease to develop. Note, it is necessary to concentrate on rice areas that have been infected with blast on leaves, ears, leaves, panicles and annual varieties that are often severely damaged by the disease; it is possible to combine blast fungicides and grain sterility fungicides to prevent and control both diseases at the same time. In particular, farmers need to ensure that the principle is followed.4 correctin the use of pesticides...