Study on the effectiveness of different control techniques for red palm weevil (Rhynchophorous ferrugineus)

Date palms are critical to food systems, economics, and culture in the Arabian Peninsula, but threats such as water scarcity, soil and water salinity, low soil fertility, and pests and diseases all threaten the plant’s survival and productivity – and climate change is on track to exacerbate these.

The International Center for Biosaline Agriculture (ICBA) has been carrying out research on this topic for 23 years in its UAE plantation – the longest-running large-scale experiment in the country – where it experiments with all main date palm varieties for the UAE and Saudi Arabia. Its work offers key insights into the sustainable management of date palm into the future, with a specific focus on what it will take to productively cultivate the crop using irrigation from saline water: conserving resilient genetic resources, promoting best farming practices, and enhancing fruit quality. The value of date palms as a cash crop is undeniable, but their growth is seriously threatened by the red palm weevil (RPW) Rhynchophorus ferrugineus (Olivier). The presence of the RPW provides an opportunity to establish robust models and detection and control techniques.