Nghe An specialty oranges fell in large numbers after floods
(Baonghean.vn)- Due to the impact of the recent floods, many orange gardens in Con Cuong district suffered massive fruit loss. Many orange gardens lost up to 60% of their fruit, some trees lost 100% of their fruit.
Mr. Le Manh Hung's household in Pha village, Yen Khe commune has 500 orange trees planted on an area of 1 hectare that are in the harvest period. This year's orange crop is expected to yield about 30 tons of fruit. However, in the past few days, due to the impact of storms and rain, his family's orange garden has lost nearly half of its oranges, with some trees losing 100%.
Mr. Hung sadly said: “We invested all our money in the orange garden, but when it was time to harvest, the oranges fell off in large numbers. Now we can only collect the fallen oranges to process and destroy them. This year, our family has lost the entire orange crop.”
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| Oranges are falling in large numbers and show no signs of stopping. Photo: Bao Han |
Also in Pha village, Yen Khe commune, Mr. Nguyen Dang Dung's family has 800 orange trees, mainly BH orange variety, which were in the harvest period but also fell off in large numbers.
Currently, Con Cuong has 417 hectares of oranges, of which 180 hectares have been harvested, and the numberfallen orangesmainly concentrated in Yen Khe commune. Many families have 70-100 orange trees with fruit falling, the fallen fruit is piled up, rotting at the base, the damage is huge.
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| Many orange garden owners lost everything and suffered great losses. Photo: Bao Han |
Yen Khe is the locality with the largest orange acreage in the district with nearly 300 hectares, of which 100 hectares have been harvested, but according to initial statistics, more than 1/3 of the orange output in the area has fallen, with total damage of hundreds of millions of dong.
Currently, some households are taking advantage of harvesting the remaining oranges on the trees to sell cheaply at prices ranging from 15-20 thousand/kg.
The reason oranges fall is due to the influence of circulation.storm number 9,In Con Cuong district, there has been rain for many days. Not only in Con Cuong but also in many key orange growing areas of Nghe An province.
According to the survey results of the Nghe An Department of Crop Production and Plant Protection, up to now, the whole province has about 5,460 hectares of oranges, a decrease of 690 hectares compared to 2018, exceeding the development plan by 314 hectares. Of which, commercial oranges have 3,230 hectares, oranges in the basic construction period have 2,234 hectares.
Previously, plant disease experts from the Plant Protection Institute (Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development) inspected orange gardens in Quy Hop, Nghia Dan and Con Cuong districts. On-site observations revealed that about 50% of the trees had symptoms of yellow leaves and rapid test kits gave the correct result of greening disease, also known as yellow leaf root rot.
Those are only the plants that have yellow leaf symptoms. Plants that have not yet shown yellow leaf symptoms must be tested by PCR in the laboratory for more accurate results and if done so, the percentage of diseased plants will be much higher.
The recent rapid test results to determine whether the orange trees have greening disease were conducted on orange orchards that were only 5-7 years old.
If tested on older orange gardens, the possibility of the number of treesinfectedThe yellow leaf greening will be much higher.
Orange greening disease, also known as citrus greening, is caused by the gram-negative bacterium Liberobacter asiaticum that lives in the phloem of the tree.
The disease is spread rapidly through grafted eyes, rootstocks when propagating by asexual methods and through sucking insects as disease vectors, which are leafhoppers. There is no specific treatment for greening disease on orange, tangerine and grapefruit trees.
Orange, grapefruit, and tangerine trees that have been infected with this disease usually have the following symptoms: Leaves have yellow spots, yellow, green veins, small and rough leaves. Branches are short, leaves fall early, fall a lot, branches die and dry, causing the tree to gradually die. Fruits are small, bad in appearance, deformed, and unbalanced. Roots gradually rot, making the ability to absorb water and nutrients poor.The fruit will fall.sometimes closer to harvest season as is happening now in the Phu Quy orange region.
One is:It is necessary to tighten the management of seedlings, absolutely do not allow the current situation of grafting, cutting, trading seedlings freely and floating on the market. If this situation continues, it will lead to the destruction of orange trees and the Vinh orange brand will also be greatly affected.
Two is:The Department of Agriculture in coordination with the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development of the districts needs to promptly conduct a general inspection and review of all orange gardens using both methods: Method of seeing trees with symptoms of yellow leaves and green veins, using a rapid test kit to correctly determine the greening disease, and at the same time using a test kit applied to orange trees that have not shown symptoms of yellow leaves to determine whether there is a disease or not for timely treatment.
Three is: WhenIf you identify orange trees that have been infected with greening disease, you must resolutely destroy them to prevent the spread. If you regretfully try to restore them, it will only be costly, and they may still produce few fruits and the fruits will fall near the harvest season, as has been happening now in local orange gardens.
Four is:There must be an agency, organization or enterprise that plants and preserves the parent tree garden in a greenhouse to exploit asexual grafting to provide disease-free seedlings for production needs.
The year is:Regularly check the orange garden, if you find leafhoppers on the branches of orange trees, use chemicals to spray and destroy them such as: Confidor, Admire 500 EC or Bassa 50EC combined with DC Tron Plus... spray periodically when the trees have new leaves, especially in spring or early rainy season, because leafhoppers often choose shoots and young leaves to lay eggs.
According to many orange garden owners, with the current weather conditions, orange falling will continue in the coming days, meaning the damage will be even greater.