 Plant
Protection |
| This section concentrates its work on pest ecology
and the pest control method. The work include the surveillance
of pest epidemics, diagnosis of pest infested plants,
and also to develop the measures to control pests.
A surveillance system for the carambola bacterial
spot disease and insect pests has been established.
The occurrence of disease and insect pests will be notified
to farmers to take a proper action. Similar kind of
alarm system is being established for other crops. Forecasting
the prevalence of disease and insect pest is usually
based on the meteorological data of past years plus
on-farm survey.
Strawberry will easily be infected by gray mold under
low temperature and humid climatic condition. After
the repeated experiments, the fungicide Scale S.C. (Pyrimethanil)
has been selected for controlling this disease. Other
effective pesticides have also been selected to control
various pests, i.e., carambola bacterial spot disease,
radish leaf beetle and white rust, bell pepper broad
mite, grape ripe rot and rice stem borer.
Honeybee larvae are often infected by Bacillus larvae.
Early diagnosis of this pathogen is crucial to prevent
increased lethality of honeybee larvae. Technique has
been developed using RAPID method to identify whether
the pathogen Bacillus larvae infected the young larva.
With this convenient method, the work of disease identification
can be finished in one day.
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| Soil
and Fertilizer |
| The main focus of the work is to develop good methods
of fertilizer application to enrich the soil fertility
of farmland. Effects of various fertilizers on the productivity
of crops are studied to evaluate the economy of fertilization.
Analysis of soil samples sent by the farmers is regularly
carried out. Leaf analysis for fruit trees is also routinely
made for diagnosis of nutritional status of fruit trees.
The data of analyses are used to determine the rate of
fertilizer application on a field. The data collected
from the analyses are stored under a computerized storage
and retrieval system for further use.
Research on compost making for organic farming is
much emphasized today. In this connection, the Station
helped farmers to establish various organic farms, to
produce organic rice, organic citrus, organic carambola,
organic loquat, organic pear and organic vegetables.
Future research will be directed to better management
of organic farms with regard to development of bio-fertilizer,
promotion of green manure cultivation, efficient way
of composting farm waste and more efficient way of fertilization.
Soil analysis and leaf analysis to serve farmers will
continue to be the main work of this section. The results
of soil analysis will be updated from time to time and
made them known to farmers through the Station’s web
site( www.mdais.gov.tw) to facilitate the flow of information.
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| Agricultural
Machinery |
| Design and improvement of farm machinery for the
use of small farms are the main research subject of this
section. The strawberry loading tricycle developed is
a very convenient tool to transport the harvested strawberry
with minimum damage to the berry in the field.
The needle type vegetable sowing machines not only
saving labor but also will bring the uniform growth
of vegetable on the field. The double-row vegetable
transplanting tractor is becoming popular after its
introduction to the farmers. The auto-movable sprinkling
irrigation system is also labor saving and easy to handle
on a farm especially on a vegetable garden. This Station
completed making the prototype mulberry plant vibrator
which is used to harvest mulberry fruits through vibration
of tree trunk. Oriental fruit fly larvae collector has
been designed to rear its parasitoids of this fly. In
addition to this, a centrifugal type royal jelly collector
was developed and recommended to farmers for use.
In the future, research will be directed to develop
automatic grading machines for mustard, taro, and pear
and flower bulb to save labor cost and also to ensure
the products quality.
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