New insects worry coffee growers

MADIKERI: A new type of insects are attacking coffee plants in Heruru village near here. These insects are slowly occupying coffee, pepper plants along with the shade silver tree. Coffee growers, Thekkade Sanjay, Sadashiv and Siddartha, expressed their concern about the spreading of the unknown insects on their coffee estates in the village. The insects are causing leaves of the plants to fall and labourers are also afraid to work on the estates due to the bugs, bringing work to a standstill. Growers said that they were familiar with the berry borer, stem-borer, white-borer, leaf-rot diseases and were able to manage problems well with timely application of pesticides. But they said the new insects are sucking plant sap, thus making it weak.Appangala Spice Research Centre scientist entomologist Dr Ankegowda and the horticultural clinic centre scientist entomologist Dr Praveen said they visited such estates along with an entomologist from Bangalore Viraktha Mutt. According to their observations, these insects, called stinkbugs or Gandhi bugs, suck the sap from the leaves which later weakens the plants. They are brown in colour and feed upon a wide variety of plants. In fact, they eat just about anything, they added.Some of their favourite food sources are black cherry, flowering dogwood, evergreen blackberry, and pine trees. Stinkbugs will suck juices from leaves, flowers, fruits, and stems and create a bad smell around the plants.A million bugs sit on the plants causing the branches to bend and leaves to shed, the entomologists said. The bugs also attack the shade silver trees. The experts said the bugs are not harmful to human beings, but the large number of bugs can affect labour. They can be controlled by spraying ecolecs pesticide, but it will not do much, said Dr Ankegowda. The bugs fly away from the plants when the pesticides are sprayed but will return later, he added.