In my opinion, Mr. Lye knows nothing about the paddy bug plague

May 09, 2019 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,

I would like to refer to letter by Clairmont Lye on paddy bug infestation, “A solution to the paddy bug control”, KN May 8th, in which he mentioned myself and a Ganga Persaud complaint of a “lack of action on the paddy bug problem in the country.”
I do believe that Mr Lye is well intentioned in offering his “limited experience” on the subject. The content of the Lye’s letter seems to suggest that if he was part of the Beacon Foundation’s “one-off trial” on paddy bug control in the Rupununi, he was a distant participant.
After mentioning that they “experienced significant paddy bug infestation for the first year”. Lye wrote,” However, following research on the internet, we identified a “neem-based” liquid, which we sprayed on when the paddy bug was at the nymph stage of development. There was subsequently almost zero infestation.”
I wonder if the Beacon Foundation was cultivating paddy or rearing paddy bugs. Where did these nymphs come from? Nymph is the stage between eggs and adult of the paddy bug. Nymphs cannot fly. To have nymphs you need to have eggs first. Having nymphs on your crop is an indication that there was a prior infestation of adult bugs which laid the eggs to produce the nymphs – simple entomological logic that Mr Lye could not contemplate.
Neem is not known to kill insects or their nymphs. So I wonder if Mr Lye is suggesting that after spraying, the nymphs walked out of the paddy fields at Moco Moco which should have water while the crop is bearing. Any rice farmer will tell you that is impossible.
Farmers know that the nymphs are more difficult to deal with given their ability to hide in the paddy foliage. Logically! The nymphs would remain, use their survival instinct, and adopt to the bitterness of the Neem and continue to feed on the paddy milk.
I can understand why GRDB never give it a thought to pass this information to the farmers, assuming the content was the same as in Lye’s letter – practically it makes no sense.
Ironically, Lye could not remember the name of the Neem-based product, but claims that, “this could be researched on Google”. The fact that he failed to do the research, questions his sincerity to contribute to assist farmers or the existence of a Neem-based product for insects.
After concluding that Neem ”does not have a known knock-down effect”, he went on a charade on the “amazing characteristics of Neem.”
I can only conclude that Mr Lye is a believer in the powers of Neem to control insects and has somehow produced a story to get farmers to try Neem on the paddy bug plague, of which he knows nothing.
Rudolph Singh

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