INTRODUCTION TO THE LARGER GRAIN BORER WORKSHOP

International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Benin

It is a pleasure to welcome all participants, particularly those who have come for the first time to IITA Cotonou. A workshop like this generates new ideas and offers the opportunity to strengthen long-term partnerships. It allows us to examine the 'institutional memory' to ensure that our research remains goal oriented and demand driven. To achieve this, we have to ask ourselves: are we truly making progress towards our common goal of benefiting farmers or is each generation of researchers simply re-inventing the wheel, piling up research findings?

The present meeting completes projects with complementary goals. One is the GTZ project "Integrated control of the larger grain borer in small farmers post-harvest-systems" headed by Albert Bell. The other is the IITA project on "Ecological and biological control of the larger grain borer Prostephanus truncatus (Horn) (Coleoptera: Bostrichidae), and associated pests of rural maize stores", now headed by Christian Borgemeister. In a third project, we tried to elucidate the ecology of P. truncatus in its area of origin in Mesoamerica. All three projects were funded by BMZ of Germany, for which we would like to thank the German authorities. Activities were concentrated on a pest that had been accidentally introduced into Africa in the 1980s.

These projects had been conceived during the first post-harvest protection meeting held in Cotonou in 1989, when IITA with FAO convened a workshop under the leadership of R. Markham to look at the advisability of proceeding with classical biological control of the larger grain borer and made recommendations for how such an effort might proceed.

Already in 1991, colleagues from GTZ and the Plant Protection Service of Togo had taken the lead in testing and introducing the predator Teretriosoma nigrescens Lewis (Coleoptera: Histeridae) in Togo. Since the dispersal of this predator from its first release sites into Benin in 1992, it has been IITA's pleasure to work with GTZ in thoroughly documenting its spread and impact. Special credit must go to Christian Borgemeister and Heiner Schneider who, with their national program colleagues, have well documented this novel instance of classical biological control of a storage pest. Today, releases of T. nigrescens are being conducted in Guinea Conakry, Zambia, Malawi, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, and Burundi, in close collaboration with IITA's Technology Testing and Transfer Unit, which is headed by Matthias Zweigert from GTZ. At the close of the intertwined projects dealing with the larger grain borer, a solution to the problem in the form of classical biological control of P. truncatus is thus at hand and has been tested at least in some ecologies. While IITA intends to continue to support releases of T. nigrescens and monitoring activities and, in collaboration with colleagues from national programs, to pursue studies on impact assessment of the predator, we feel that we no longer need a specific larger grain borer research project. This is a great achievement.

What exactly remains to be done in biological control of the larger grain borer and where do we go from here? Those are the main questions to be addressed by the present workshop. The first half of the time will be devoted to the first question concerning specifically the larger grain borer. During the second half, you will discuss post-harvest systems, including socio-economic aspects. You might then assess what has proven to work in the past, what did not work, and what new questions arose that need answers. You will also try to see to what extent the results from West Africa can be used in East Africa and how previous research in East Africa can benefit West Africa. For this, you may develop new linkages with colleagues from that region as well as from International Institute of Biological Control (IIBC).

Looking further into the future, I would like to place past achievements in a historical context based on the long-term partnerships embodied in this meeting and to see how they point ahead to continuing collaboration. From the mid-70s onward, IITA has worked with DANIDA and FAO to develop storage structures and management strategies for the protection of stored maize. In line with the trend at that time, the project focused on one technical solution — improved stores. The BMZ-sponsored projects that come to a close at the end of this year brought another technical solution, namely biological control of P. truncatus. As from next year, DANIDA again will be IITA's main supporter in post-harvest plant protection and we intend to further open up our research to a system-wide view.

Following IITA's restructuring, we concentrated all research on IPM in maize within one project envelope. Apart from field pests, and at the request of various national programmes and other bodies, this research concerns all storage insect pests as well as pathogens, including Aspergillus which produces aflatoxin. As most store problems originate in the field, a closer investigation of the interface between field and store is needed. At present, we are trying to develop GIS-based decision tools for storage pest management and to link them with environmental and economic parameters, in collaboration with various Danish institutions and projects supported by DANIDA and based in Benin. Indeed, some of these scientists are in the audience. We intend to establish close links with national institutions and develop a product that serves the practitioner. In laboratory and field studies, we have continued the evaluation of maize varietal characteristics and of entomopathogens as stored-product pest management tools. On all these points we hope to receive further guidance from the workshop recommendations.

As post harvest research is moving beyond dealing with individual insect and pathogen species, we shall also have to strengthen our links with IITA's post-harvest project. This project covers a vast range of activities, from machinery conceived to alleviate drudgery to processing and marketing procedures designed to upgrade the value of food products. Both IPM and post-harvest projects have to make sure that, by collaborating with each other and with national programmes, they develop and test scientifically methods, materials, results, and recommendations that derive from farmers' practices and that are in turn adaptable by farmers and acceptable to consumers.

Finally, I would like to recall the comments made by Ulrich Roettger from GTZ at the end of last year's meeting of the larger grain borer projects' steering committee at IITA. He first admitted that he had come to that meeting deeply sceptical of the value of continued investment in this field of research. At the end of the meeting, he went on record as saying that he felt the project on post-harvest plant protection in maize represented a model of how partnership between researchers, development agencies, and national organisations could work effectively to produce a result that truly benefited our target groups, primarily the African farmers. Individual researchers may come and go, but I invite all of you here to continue to use the good offices of IITA. After all, you are the direct clients benefiting from our training, institutionalised links to the national programmes, NGOs, and donors, and - most importantly - from our on-going research efforts. I am convinced that by collaborating we can solve some of the remaining and still considerable problems in the vital post-harvest sector.