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Urgent Action for Capacity Building to Control Desert Locust Infestation in The Islamic Republic of Iran - TCP/IRA/3801

Year of publication 2024

Place of publication Rome, Italy ;

Pages 9

Publisher FAO ;

Product type Project

Synopsis (short abstract) On 26 January 2019, almost a week after the Plant Protection Office (PPO) received the 21 January 2019 warning from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Commission for Controlling the Desert Locust in South-West Asia (SWAC), Desert Locust swarms arrived in the Nakhilou district in the Islamic Republic of Iran’s province of Hormozgan. The PPO took immediate action, establishing a Desert Locust central headquarters, and, sending out warning messages to seven provinces that were also at risk of being infested by the swarm. All existing capacity at the provincial level, including managers, PPO experts and the Control Network staff, numbering nearly 500 people, was used to keep track of the swarm and monitor entrance points, existent egg-laying zones and existent mature locust-infested districts. Supplementing these efforts, 40 Ultra Low Volume (ULV) truck-mounted sprayers, 150 offroad vehicles and 30 000 litres of deltamethrin and malathion were used to eradicate locust populations in the first phase of their invasion. Additionally, ten plane-mounted pesticide sprayers from the Special Services Company saw use in the seven affected provinces. By the end of the 2019 infestation, PPO had treated more than 760 000 hectares of land across nine provinces in order to control the Desert Locust outbreak and mitigate its impact on food security. By the end of that year, two additional provinces had been affected.

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