Tshering Palden

A farmer in Martshala gewog, Samdrupjongkhar, Sonam Yeshey, cut down 19 orange trees after they were detected with citrus greening.

He feared how much of his over 1,000 mandarin trees he would lose. “I never heard of a disease like that, but had to cut down those dying orange trees, as I feared the disease would spread to the rest of the other trees,” Sonam Yeshey said.

His two neighbours, whose orange trees had the same symptoms, refused to fell the infected trees, despite the gewog agriculture officer’s repeated recommendations.

This, agriculture officials said, was one of the main problems in dealing with pest control, after its first detection in Punakha and Wangduephodrang in 2001.

Sonam Yeshey said village elders believe the infected trees would regenerate after some years.

“Agriculture officials feel otherwise,” he said. “Which is true?”

The disease is caused by a bacterium (Candidatus liberi- bacter asiaticus) and spread by an insect, a psyllid called Diphorina Citri, which is easily transmitted to other trees if the host is not removed.

Deputy chief plant protection officer Namgay Om said there was no cure for the dis-ease.

“We have to terminate the source of the infection, by cutting down infected trees, and spraying insecticides, to control the pests thereafter,” she said.

Her office, National Plant Protection Centre at Semtokha, Thimphu, carries out sample collection, detects plant dis- eases and provides technical support.

In 2006, a testing laboratory for the samples was established, but the human resource shortage persists.

Of the 16 mandarin-growing dzongkhags, the disease had been detected in 12 as of 2010.

“It doesn’t mean that all orchards in the respective dzongkhags are infected,” Namgay Om said. “It shows that the samples collected from these dzongkhags have tested positive.”

Tsheten Dorji from Nanong under Pemagatshel has over 40 orange trees infected in his or- chard of over 150.

“I sprayed insecticides or cared for the trees by watering and clearing the bushes around them, only after the trees were infected,” he said. “No one had told me about the disease until I learnt that the orchard had been attacked.”

Agriculture officials said they carry out awareness campaigns though fairs, and extensions officials and that they have a full program under the ministry solely to address citrus issues.

Surveys and sample collections are also carried out annually to detect the presence of the disease.

Agriculture department director Chencho Norbu said Bhutanese orange orchards in general lacked management.

“We need to give back to the soil what is used through the harvests,” he said. “Lack of nutrient deficiency also makes the crop susceptible to diseases.”

He said the movement of saplings was restricted, except for those from government nurseries.

“We discourage private nurseries in developing saplings and provide those, who would make an orchard, with specially cultivated saplings,” he said.

There are about four nurseries.

The department carried out a mass awareness campaign in 2004 on the disease distributing sprayers and insecticides for pest management.

Mandarin production ranks with potato as the two major ex-port crops of Bhutan.

“However, farmers pay no attention to pruning and crop management, so that the national average is the second lowest in the region,” the director said.

Citrus is the highest-value export crop for Bhutan.

Mandarin cultivation in Bhutan is categorised into Sikkim mandarin (found in south-west dzongkhags) and Khasi mandarin (found in south-central and south-east dzongkhags).

About the disease:

The disease was first reported in China as early as 1890s.
Huan Long Bing (HLB), known as citrus greening, has the following symptoms: stunt- ing, twig dieback, sparse yellow foliage, severe fruit drop, severe decline seen mainly with Asian greening which is the kind of disease spread in Bhutan.

Why the name Greening? The fruits of the infected trees do not have proper colour, remaining green on the shaded side (the part of the fruit that does not face the sun) hence the name greening. The shoots of the infected trees are yellow, hence the Chinese name ‘Huang-lung-pin’ or yellow shoot.

Tshering Palden

Of the 127,942 households in Bhutan, 11,049 are poor and 2,322 extremely poor the poverty assessment report (PAR) 2012 states.

This means nine percent are poor and two percent extremely poor based on the new total poverty line of a mini- mum consumption expenditure of Nu 1,704.80 a person a month. The total poverty line is the sum of the food poverty line of Nu 1,154.74 and non-food allowance of Nu 550.10.

According to the report, one in every Bhutanese is below the poverty line or an estimated 12 percent of the population is poor. It was 23.2 percent in 2007.

The extremely or subsist- ence poor households, which means the two percent, are those “whose consumption expenditure is insufficient even to meet basic food needs even if they devote their entire consumption expenditure to food alone”.

The PAR 2012, states the best estimate of poverty rate in the country is 12 percent. This estimate has a margin of error of 1.2 percentage points, which means the true poverty rate of the country stands be- tween 10.9 percent and 13.2 percent.

Among the dzongkhags, poverty rates are highest in Lhuentse (31.9 percent), Pemagatshel (26.9 percent), Zhemgang (26.3 percent), Dagana (25.1 percent), Samtse (22.2 percent) and Samdrupjongkhar (21 percent).

Of the total, 17 percent of the country’s poor lives in Samtse, another 9.1 percent in Samdrupjongkhar, 8.8 percent in Chukha, and 8.6 percent in Pemagatshel.

The rates of extreme poverty are high in Lhuentse at 11.1 percent and Zhemgang at 9.9 percent, while Samtse and Zhemgang have the high- est distribution of this group of people.

While rural poverty has reduced from 31 percent in 2007 to 17 in 2012, the poor in urban areas have remained “unchanged” at about two percent, the report states.

Extreme poverty also fell from six percent in 2007 to about three percent last year. The rate of extremely poor people in rural areas was halved in 2012 to four percent from 2007.

About 44 percent of the poor live in households headed by those engaged in agriculture, and 16 percent in households whose head is not actively participating in the labour force.

For those below 25 years, the poverty rate is three percent against 14 percent for those over 65 years. “It is noticed that most household heads (68 percent) in Bhutan are 25 to 54 years, while less than five percent are below age 25, and about 13 percent are 65 and above,” the report states.

The assessment also found that literacy rate is lower in poor people (52 percent) than in non-poor (65 percent). The literacy rate of the non-poor in urban areas is 17 percent more than the poor. In rural areas, it is six percent more than the literacy rate of the poor.

The average income of non-poor households in urban areas is Nu 23,784, three times more than what poor households earn. For those households away from towns, the average income of non-poor households is Nu 9,348, twice more than the poor households.

When it comes to access to improved drinking water sources the report states there is hardly any disparity between poor and non-poor households.

Some 82 percent of poor households own mobile phones, 92 percent for non-poor, while 59 and 12 percent of non-poor households have television sets and Internet connection respectively. For poor households, it is 21 percent and two percent.

A person belonging to the richest 20 percent of the national population consumes 6.7 times more than a person belonging to the poorest 20 percent of the population.

The assessment analysed data from BLSS 2012 that surveyed 8,968 households across the country. The survey gathered data on household consumption expenditure, demographics characteristics of household members, household assets, credit and income, remittances, housing, access to public facilities and services, education, employment, health of household members, and prices paid for commodities.