Vietnamese scientist develops two biopesticide products

Loc, from the Mekong Delta Rice Institute, has received the prize for her work “the technological procedure to make Ometar and Biovip – the two biopesticide products”.

The products made with the new technology have high and stable quality. Especially, they do not cause the environment pollution.

Farmers save trillions of dong with friendly bio-preparations

The bio-product has a big advantage that farmers just need to spray one time to have the effect throughout the crop. Ometar could be used to kill stinkbugs if the rice is attacked by the buck. Besides, Ometar could also be useful to harm coconut beetles.

If compared with the plant protection chemicals, the use of the bio-product allows reducing the cost to kill pests by 10 times. Meanwhile, it does not pollute the environment, which is considered the biggest advantage, and does not kill natural enemies.

Especially, it is great that Ometar is sprayed to kill pests in the flowering period. Scientists believe that this is the most reasonable period to use biopesticide, because this would not affect the quality of rice and the crop yield. If spraying chemical pesticides during the flowering period, this would affect the pollination of particle, thus leading to the lower productivity.

Farmers can make biopesticide at low costs

With so many advantages, the bio-products can bring the benefit of trillions of dong to farmers a year.

Over the last 17 years, Dr Loc joined the scientific research in 40 projects. She has been most interested in the project on making the two bio-products to control pesticide, which were highly appreciated scientifically. The two products were granted the “golden rice” award by the Can Tho International Farm Produce and Seafood Trade Fair some years ago.

It always takes a long time to bring scientific research works into life. Though the two bio-products were recognized as having high effects in preventing and killing pests that harm rice fields and the pests that harm coconuts in Mekong Delta, the modest output of the bio-products would not help protect farm produce from insects.

According to Loc, some years ago, the insect epidemic broke out, while only three tons of bio-products were put out a month; far below the demanded volume of 100 tons a month in the region. Though the product was friendly to the environment, the production cost was overly high, and the production could not satisfy the demand.

Therefore, since 2007, Loc has begun her work to find out a reasonable technological procedure to make the two products at low costs. Loc believed that the technology could be so simple that the products can be made by farmers themselves.

In 2008, Loc gladly announced that she and her colleagues successfully found out a fast manufacturing process to make out Ometar at the household scale. The technology is simple and is easy to be applied. Therefore, it has been transferred to thousands of farmer households in seven provinces and cities in Mekong Delta.

The technology has also been transferred to the technical officers of the centers for utilizing scientific achievements in Binh Thuan and Binh Dinh province. Most recently, Ometar has been used to the rice fields in Quoc Oai district of Hanoi. Some other localities including Tien Giang, Bac Lieu, Ca Mau and Ninh Thuan have asked for the technology transfer.

Farmers just have to pay 200,000 dong for every hectare for every time of spraying. If farmers can make the products themselves, they would have to spend 50,000 dong only, which allows them to save 1.5-2 million dong per hectares in comparison with chemical pesticide.