Papaya

Nematode Management

Nursery

Reniform nematode - Rotylenchulus reniformis
Root-knot nematode - Meloidogyne incognita
The symptoms include yellowing of leaves and gall formation in leaves.

Control

To control nematodes in the nursery, apply carbofuran 3 G @ 1g/polybag after germination.
Root knot nematodes (Meloidogyne sp.) and Reniform nematode (Rotylenchulus reniformis) are the two nematodes affecting papaya.

Main field

Root knot nematode

Root knot nematodes occur in large numbers in all kinds of soil.

Symptoms of injury

The larvae of root knot nematodes, when entering roots cause very slight mechanical injury except where large numbers enter in a limited area. Most of the effects on the surrounding plant tissues are caused by the secretion ejected through the stylet while the larvae are feeding. Sometimes root tips are devitalized and their growth is stopped. Such damage will impair root spread and thus the ability of the plants to take up water and nutrients, greatly affect the seedlings. The infected roots of papaya tend to form very small galls which look like beads on a string. The symptoms may be characterised as a combination of galls and coarse roots resulting in stunting, yellowing and drying of leaves.

Lesion nematode

The reniform nematodes (Rotylenchulus reniformis) is also a serious pest in papaya growing areas. The loss of fruit yield and stunting of growth have not been noticed in the field.

Symptoms of injury

The root injury caused by reniform nematode is different from the injury of root knot nematodes. Reniform nematodes do not cause swelling or retardation of the root. Their presence in the roots may be detected by observing the small grains of sand like bodies which are found attached to the root surface after washing the root system carefully. In case of heavy infestations, the above ground symptoms are similar to those of root knot nematodes. Generally, nematode infected trees of papaya are more sensitive to the stresses and wilt than the non-infested trees. The size of the fruits may become smaller and of poor quality.

Management practice

Employ both the combination of cultural and chemical methods for effective control of nematodes in papaya.

Cultural

Test the soil for nematode population before using for raising the seedlings. As far as possible remove all the undecomposed roots, debris etc. of the soil. Heap all the clearings from the site separately away from the sowing/planting site as greatly enhanced nematode population develops under these heaps. Follow crop rotation as a preventive measure.

Chemical

Apply carbofuran 3 G @ 20 g per pit before transplanting the seedlings to the main field.

Physiological disorders

Stamen carpellody or cat-faced fruit

This melady occurs only in gynodioecious form of papaya. When temperature goes below 20^oC during flower initiation in bisexual flowers, the stamens adhere to the ovarian wall and thus the developing fruit possess a mis-shapened appearance.

Remedy

Do not grow gynodioecious papayas in areas having extremes of temperature.

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Tamilnadu

Papaya

About Papaya

History
Morphology

Papaya Management

Services Overview

The key services offered by Ikisan are:

System study, design and development of IT enabled solutions and services for the agri sector.

Execution of rural IT enabled projects on BOT/BOOT/Turnkey basis.

Development, Customization and Deployment of Ikisan's IPR protected software applications.

Providing support services and best management practices for augmenting the marketing development efforts of the groups agricultural input companies (NFCL and NACL).

Development and Dissemination of best practice and information though a unique multi lingual knowledge website for the agri sector.

Some of the key customers/partners that benefit significantly from our work include are Electronics Corporation of India Ltd, State Agricultural Marketing Boards, Central Research Institute for Dryland Agriculture, Tamilnadu, Centre for Development of Advanced Computing, Motorola Mobility (GOOGLE) etc.

As highlighted earlier Ikisan provides significant support to the market development and marketing efforts of NFCL and NACL by providing best practices and information across the agricultural input value chain - weather, soil, seeds, fertilizers, water, pesticides, output prices etc. that have enabled the companies to develop deep customer relationships and in turn enable them to grow above market growth rates. Recently example in fertilizers includes the development of Customized Fertilizer Grades (for NFCL across India that are crop and location specific have not only reduced the current consumption of fertilizers of farmers but have significantly enhanced crop yields and farmer incomes) that are expected to add significant revenues to the company.

Currently, agriculture value chain is driven by technical expertise. However, there is a lack of adequate Management knowledge and skills amongst the professionals. Therefore, Ikisan and XLRI, Jamshedpur have jointly developed an Agri Business Management Program for Agri-professionals and students. Ikisan provides the domain expertise while XLRI provides pedagogy. This program is a combination of virtual learning and campus based module at XLRI, Jamshedpur. This program has been highly appreciated.

Intellectual Property Rights for many software applications such as Field Manager, Vyapar, Mandi, Quick Solutions Systems, Management Time Table, Agri Information System and Agrecommerz belong to Ikisan. A significant recent development in this area is the introduction of Weather Based Crop Insurance. This entails setting up of Automatic Weather Stations, which provide dynamic village-level data essential for settlement of weather based insurance claims.