Md. Arifur Rahman
Senior Scientific Officer
Vertebrate Pest Division, BARI
Dr. Gobinda Chandra Biswas
Principal Scientific Officer
Vertebrate Pest Division, BARI
An experiment was conducted at Regional Agricultural Reseach Station, Rahmatpur, Barisal to develop an eco-friendly management technique for controling roof rat. Barrier by metal sheet (2 ft) wrapping around the tree trunk 3 ft above from the ground provided significantly the highest (93.33%) nut damage reduction over pretreatment followed by barrier of aluminium foil (64.29%).
Study, black rat, Rattus rattus, status, coconut, eco-friendly management,
RARS, Rahmatpuir, Barisal
Pest Management
i) To know the incidence and damage severity of rat on coconut
ii)To find out the most effective management technique against black rat
The experiment was conducted at Regional Agricultural Reseach Station, Rahmatpur, Barisal during December 2012-May 2013. There were five treatments including control which are assinged as follows: T1: Barrier by metal sheet, T2: Barrier by aluminium foil, T3: Trapping (Snap/Kill), T4: Acute poison (Zn Phosphide) bait and T5: Untreated control. The experiment was laid out in randomized complete block design with three replications. One tree was served as one replication. The treatments were randomly allotted in each block. Trees with average age (10-12 years) and green nuts (25 days) were considered for study. Total trees of the orchard were devided into five groups and data were recorded every alternate day on number of damaged and healthy nuts per tree then percent damaged nut was calculated. The groups (10 trees/group) were catagorized based on plant height, age and damaged nut. Metal sheet (2x2ft) and aluminium foil (2x2ft) were wrapped around the tree trunk 3 ft above from the ground. A Snap/kill trap was set at the base of the coconut tree per plant with palatable food (dry fish and biscutes mixtures). Number of trapped rats were checked and recorded everyday. Acute poison bait (3 gm) was placed on a piece of paper in the bottom of every plant and weight was measured before placing the fresh poison bait. The data were analyzed using MSTAT software and means were separated by least significant differences (LSD) at 5% level for stastical difference.
VPD, Research Report, BARI, Gazipur
Sixty thousands
Rat damage rate in different groups of coconut trees are summarized in Table 1. The highest damage was 29.67% and the lowest was 24.33% observed in group-5 and group-4, respectively. The effectiveness of different treatments for controlling the roof rat is presented in Table 2. Barrier by wrapping of metal sheet around the tree trunk provided significantly the highest nut damage reduction (93.33%) over pretreatment followed by barrier of aluminium foil (64.33%) which was identical to acute poison bait (64.20%). Whereas, 38.21% reduction of rat population was observed in trapping by snap trap. Significantly the lowest nut damage reduction (16.33%) over pretreatment was recorded in untreated control trees. On the other hand, 12% rat was trapped by trapping and 3 % dead rat was found in acute poison (Zn Phosphide) bait trapping treatment.
Report/Proceedings