On 17 March 2017, Thomas Dubois, Regional Director, WorldVeg Eastern and Southern Africa Tanzania, and Henry Wainwright, managing director and founder of RealIPM, signed a hosting agreement that will see both organizations work closer together to combat pests and diseases through biological control.

The RealIPM Company is the largest biological control company in sub-Saharan Africa and has tremendous experience in researching biological control options for smallholder farmers together with many research organizations. Entomologists at WorldVeg already have tested some of RealIPM’s products for potential use against the tomato leaf miner (Tuta absoluta) with great success. For example, based on joint research, the fungus Metarhizium anisopliae reduced Tuta damage to a minimum when inoculated onto small tomato seedlings, and seems as effective in controlling Tuta in the open field as chemical pesticides.

WorldVeg scientists are particularly keen on testing more RealIPM products, especially under low-cost protected cultivation, which is a new and exciting option for farmers in Tanzania. WorldVeg scientists are working together with protected cultivation specialists from CIRAD, a French research organization, and A to Z Textiles, a company that uses its mosquito net technology to make screenhouses.

RealIPM will implement a demonstration field at WorldVeg to jointly research predatory mites and entomopathogenic fungi, and to test options that are feasible for farmers to use. We also hope to test parasitoids in the near future.