Rep o rt of th e tw en - Rotterdam Convention

and 15 of them have already been adopted. In order to give a boost to the export and import of
agricultural commodities, five laboratories with modern facilities have been established at four regional
plant quarantine stations, namely, Mumbai, Kolkata, Amritsar, Chennai and one at the national plant
quarantine station, New Delhi. Similar facilities were proposed at more stations.
3.8 Indonesia
Pest infestation is still an essential limiting factor for crop production in Indonesia. Although
a number of efforts have been made to solve this problem, serious damages caused by pest attacks
are still reported from some crop production areas.
During the past two years (2003 and 2004), rat, stem borer, brown plant hopper, tungro and
blast disease were reported to cause damage on rice farms. Areas damaged by those pests were
189 193 ha in 2003 and 180 804 ha in 2004. Estimated yield losses caused by those pests were
139 875 tons in 2003 and 140 570 tons in 2004.
Bacterial leaf blight, golden snail, and locust were also reported to cause damage on rice
farms. Areas damaged by bacterial leaf blight reached 25 403 ha in 2003 and 37 229 ha in 2004.
Golden snail damaged young rice plants in many provinces. The area damaged was 13 227 ha in
2003 and 16 737 ha in 2004, whereas the area of locust infestation was 318 ha in 2003 and 5 383 in
2004.
Some other important crops which were also reported to suffer from serious pest attacks
during the past two years were corn (damages were mainly caused by rat, powdery mildew, stem
borer, army worm, pod borer, leaf blight, locust and rice seedling flies), soybean (damages were
mainly caused by army worm, pod borer, rat leaf roller, bean fly and green semi-loopers), peanut
(major pests reported were army worm, leaf roller, brown spot, wild pig, rat and leaf rust), mung
bean (major pests reported include, bean fly, rat and army worm), cassava (major pests reported
were red spider mite, rat, and brown spot), potato (major pests reported were red spider mite, rat,
and brown spot), potato (major pests reported was golden cyst nematode), sweet potato (major pests
reported were tuber borer, rat, and wild pig), banana (major pests reported was wilt disease), citrus
(major pest reported was fruit flies), rambutan (major pest reported was leaf caterpillar), cocoa (major
pest reported was cocoa pod borer) and pepper (major pest reported was basal rot disease).
To cope with the pest problem, crop protection was practiced through the application of IPM
at the farm level. This IPM system included periodic and intensive monitoring of the pest population,
the use of resistant varieties, the implementation of the cropping system, the use of biological control
agents, and other environmentally friendly control methods. Pesticides would only be used when
other control measures were considered no longer effective. In line with the IPM policy, the
Government of Indonesia banned the use of 36 pesticide chemicals and restricted the use of four
others.
Changes were made to the Plant Quarantine Organization recently. Under the new setup,
the Agricultural Quarantine Agency (AQA) was mandated to perform the enforcement of food safety
and biosafety regulations at the entry and exit points. At the national level, this work would be
managed by the Information and Biosecurity Centre, a new unit under the AQA. The Centre for
Animal and Plant Quarantine Techniques and Methods, a former unit under the AQA, was dissolved
and its functions transferred to the Animal Quarantine Centre and Plant Quarantine Centre, respectively.
With these new structural changes, AQA now consists of three centres, namely the Animal Quarantine
Centre, the Plant Quarantine Centre, and the Information and Biosecurity Centre, and a Secretariat.
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