Addressing pest and disease challenges in the national forest plantations: lessons learned from the national forest health forum

Abstract

This paper presents the results of the work carried out by the National Forest Health Forum (NFHF), which covered five National Forest Plantations: Mbizi (Sumbawanga), Meru/Usa (Kilimanjaro), Meru (Arusha), Shume (Tanga) and Sao Hill (Iringa) for the period of five years (May, 2012 - July, 2017). The problems addressed are diseases caused by pathogens and those caused by inadequacies of various requirements from the soils. Many of the diseases have been soil-borne which gave rise to foliar symptoms, with Armillaria root rot being in the lead. Occasionally, the ravage by insect pests was encountered at Sao Hill and Meru Forest Plantations. These problems threaten the productivity of the plantations against the objective for the plantations of supporting the much needed industrialization process. To a large extent, these problems which were recorded in the visited plantations were noted to be accelerated by two phenomena namely; climate change and taungya. Therefore, this paper describes the problems addressed in the plantations; the steps adopted in addressing them, key findings and recommendations for achieving better plantations.