Diversity and Inclusion Section Site

Met the rice pest - Kyushu Okinawa Agricultural Research Center, NARO (KARC/NARO)

Date of visit: October 6th, 2017
Weather: Rainy and cloudy



Hello, everyone! This is Narorin♪
In this Narorin Report or Naroripo, I will tell you about my visit to the Kyushu Okinawa Agricultural Research Center, NARO (KARC/NARO) in Koshi City, Kumamoto Prefecture.

Although it was raining on that day, the rain stopped when I arrived.

I visited the laboratory of the Insect Pest Management Group. Here, they are studying small insects called rice planthoppers. This insect inserts its long and narrow mouth into the stem of rice and sucks the juice thereby spreading the virus and the disease into the rice plant!

When the population of rice planthoppers increases, the rice plants will wither completely and the affected area in the rice field will look like a hole. It is called "Tsubogare" in Japanese.

As the rice planthoppers continue to feed on the rice plants, the damage eventually spreads into the entire rice field and all plants wither. The Head of the Insect Pest Management Group, Dr. Matsumura, caught a planthopper and showed it to me!

Small mini-sized rice planthoppers!

Then I went to a room where they rear rice planthoppers for research purpose.

Rearing rice planthoppers is very difficult! Rice seeds are sown on the tray at the bottom of the box and serve as the food of rice planthoppers later.

When the seeds grow, the rice planthoppers from mature rice plants are collected and placed in the box with germinating rice plants! By shaking the box diagonally, the rice planthoppers are dropped into the box!

As the rice plants grow, the rice planthoppers begin to suck the juice from the stems of rice.

Since they are rearing many planthoppers, a large quantity of rice is needed to feed the planthoppers. They use almost three buckets of rice per week!!!

Rearing rice planthoppers is a tedious job but the members of this research group are doing their best!

The rice planthoppers are used for developing rice cultivars which are strong against planthoppers. And they are also used to investigate the effect of insecticides in controlling rice planthoppers.

Because it is a small insect, it is necessary to investigate the species of planthoppers and to test the insecticide by examining in a microscope!

Every year, rice planthoppers migrate to Japan from East Asia and Southeast Asia. As we cannot stop the planthoppers coming from abroad, it is important to investigate the arrival time and country of origin of the rice planthoppers every year and to make the necessary arrangements accordingly.

Here they research about the possibility of predicting the arrival time of the planthopper and have introduced a prediction program that can forecast the arrival planthoppers.

The program is prepared based on the results of investigating various flying methods depending on the species of planthoppers and weather data. It can be used in mobile phones even in rice fields♪

They are also actively cooperating with laboratories abroad, and acquiring various information about planthoppers to improve the program. To disseminate various research results, they have created a handbook for controlling rice planthoppers.

I thought that it would be great if the damage caused by the insects to the rice crop can be decreased as the research progresses.

Titbits
I could see small white flowers blooming over there.

Oh, it's buckwheat flower~♪

Now I'm wondering where to go next...

Check here for further details about the Kyushu Okinawa Agricultural Research Center, NARO.


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