Insect plague ravages North African prickly pear

CHEBIKA – Amor Nouira, a farmer from the Tunisian village of Chebika, has lost hope that he can save his prickly pears. The prickly pears are being ravaged by the scale insect that is spreading across North Africa.

The 50-year-old saw his half-acre of cacti wither as the invasive insect destroyed about a third of the country’s cacti after an outbreak in 2021.

“Initially I wanted to experiment with the production of prickly pears and gradually invest while looking for customers outside the country, mainly for its natural oil,” says Nouira.

“But… when the cacti got damaged, I dropped the idea of ​​investing and didn’t think about it at all.”

Prickly pear is eaten and used for the production of oils, cosmetics and body care products.

In Chebika, as in other rural areas in central Tunisia, many farmers’ fields of prickly pears (also known as Opuntia) have been affected by the cochineal species, which swept through North Africa a decade ago, starting in Morocco.

The insect, like the prickly pear, is native to America and feeds on the plant’s nutrients and fluids, often causing the plant to die.

The plagues have caused significant economic losses for thousands of farmers who depend on the prickly pear, as authorities struggle to combat the epidemic in a country where the fruit is widely eaten as a summer snack.

LIVELIHOOD

Tunisian authorities estimate that about 150,000 families earn their living from growing Opuntia.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the North African country is the world’s largest fruit producer after Mexico, with about 600,000 hectares of crops and a yield of about 550,000 tons per year.

Only the production destined for export – about a third of the total harvest – has remained in good condition, said Rabeh Hajlaoui, head of the plant health department at the Tunisian Ministry of Agriculture.

“We are doing everything we can to save these plants, which are an important source of income for some local people,” he explains, adding that one liter of extracted Opuntia oil can be sold for up to $4,200.

Farmers also plant prickly pear cacti because they are more resistant to drought and desertification. They are also sometimes used to demarcate and fence properties in Tunisia and neighboring Libya.

In Morocco, where the first cases of cochineal were found in 2014, Opuntia is cultivated on a total area of ​​160,000 hectares.

In 2016, the Moroccan government published an “emergency plan” to combat the cochineal plague. Experiments were conducted with different chemicals, infected cacti were buried, and research was conducted to develop resistant strains.

Despite the plan, about 75% of Opuntia crops in Morocco were infected by August 2022, said Mohamed Sbaghi, a professor at the National Institute of Agricultural Research in Rabat (INRA) and coordinator of the emergency plan.

In neighboring Algeria, authorities recorded an outbreak in 2021 in Tlemcen, a city near the border with Morocco.

Prickly pear cultivation covers about 60,000 hectares in the country and the fruit is so popular that a festival is dedicated to it every year in the Eastern Kabylia region.

‘PUBLIC SAFETY’

Neither the plant nor the cochineal is native to North Africa, but the region’s dry climate has helped its spread, says Tunisian entomologist Brahim Chermiti.

“Climate change, with increasing droughts and high temperatures, is promoting their reproduction,” he told AFP.

The region has been experiencing severe drought in recent years, with declining rainfall and intense heat.

Chermiti believes that combating the cochineal invasion is a matter of “public safety” and that this requires “strict border controls and public awareness.”

The researcher fears total contamination, because “the virus will spread sooner or later, with the help of many factors such as the wind and livestock”.

According to Hajlaoui of the Tunisian Ministry of Agriculture, the problem could even lead to social unrest if it spreads to farms in disadvantaged areas, such as Tunisia’s Kasserine governorate, where Opuntia is virtually the only source of income for many.

He said the “slow administrative procedures” during the first major outbreaks in Tunisia hampered efforts to contain the spread of cochineal.

Initially, infected crops in Morocco and Tunisia were burned and uprooted, but authorities are now targeting “natural resistance” to the insect, Hajlaoui said.

Last summer, Morocco’s INRA reported that it had identified eight Opuntia varieties that are resistant to cochineal and could potentially be cultivated.

The other solution, the expert added, is to spread the ladybug Hyperaspis trifurcata, which is also native to America, among the cacti. The ladybug eats scale insects.

In Morocco, farmers have started breeding ladybirds “so that they are always ready” in case of an outbreak, said Aissa Derhem, head of the environmental organization Dar Si Hmad.

Last month, Tunisia received 100 ladybirds, along with an emergency budget of $500,000 for cochineal control allocated by the FAO.