Inception Workshop Area-Wide Integrated Pest Management of Fruit Flies in South and Southeast Asian Countries

Faculty, staff and students are invited to participate in the inception workshop on “Area-Wide Integrated Pest Management of Fruit Flies in South and Southeast Asian Countries” being held at the Asian Institute of Technology between 1-3 September 2010. Participants get to interact with the invited scientists and participants from the agriculture ministries in the region.

The inception workshop is the culmination of the first three months of the inception period of the project titled project “Area-wide Fruit Fly Integrated Pest Management in South and Southeast Asia.” The Asian Institute of Technology (AIT), in collaboration with the Bio-Control Research Laboratory (BCRL), Bangalore, India; the FAO Asia-Integrated Pest Management (IPM) Program and associated National IPM Programs of Ministries of Agriculture in Lao PDR, Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand, have been awarded this regional Mekong river basin project by the Global Horticulture Initiative (GHI). Apart from these countries, Myanmar has also requested to join this to work in tandem with this regional project.

The project is intended to test, promote and socialize among smallholder farmers a range of novel IPM options for fruit fly management within the context of ongoing IPM farmer training and action research programs in the Mekong basin countries.

The Inception Workshop has the following objectives:

1. To share highlights of accomplishments and challenges of previous and ongoing research and development projects related to fruit fly management in the implementing countries and in the region;
2. To share experiences of innovative and latest management options for clean and safe fruit fly management and its adoption at farmers’ level;
3. To share the country strategy highlighting area, season, crop, fruit fly species, plans for action research, TOTs, FFS and other trainings as per the agreed project work plans along with monitoring and evaluation plans and budget requirements;

The project also intends to support part of the research by AIT Master/PhD students on a mutually agreed topic related to the fruit flies in the Mekong River Basin countries of Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and Thailand.

Kindly register your name with Khun Suppatra ([email protected]) by 25 August 2010.
For further information on the project and its activities, please contact Dr. Prabhat Kumar ([email protected]); phone: 5477. More details can be found at this link.