Coffee berry borer, which considerably affected coffee production in India in the last two decades, started spreading fast after the Union government liberalised the coffee trade in the country.
This interesting find was in a paper submitted to the International Coffee Organisation (ICO) by the Central Coffee Research Institute (CCRI) operating under the state-owned Bangalore-headquartered Coffee Board of India.
In the paper submitted by PK Vinod Kumar of CCRI, it was mentioned that “Till 1995, the Coffee Board had total control over the marketing of coffee in India and so the movement of coffee within the plantation area was restricted. The advent of free marketing of coffee made it a strictly private sector activity and movement of coffee within the plantation districts was unrestricted. Hence, berry borer incidence started off in the hither to unaffected areas, which were isolated from the infested areas.”
For instance, this happened in an area of the Chikamagalur district in 2002, which was completely free of berry borer till then, CCRI claimed. Chikamagalur is one of three major coffee growing belts in Karnataka that contribute around 70% of total coffee production of the country.
In India, both Arabica and Robusta coffees are cultivated in about 3.88 lakh hectares in Karnataka, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu, constituting the traditional coffee growing area and in the non-traditional areas of Andhra Pradesh and Orissa and the North-Eastern states. Since coffee berry borer recorded first in 1990 in South India, it has gradually spread to more areas and is now prevalent in almost all the coffee growing zones in Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu (88% of the coffee area in India). However, it has not spread to the non-traditional areas that accounts for 12% of coffee area in the country.
The spread of the coffee berry borer was rapid during the first 5-6 years of its detection with an annual average increase of 35%. But due to the effective use of the recommended interventions, the spread declined to about 5.1% from 1996 onwards to 2001. Since the advent of free marketing, the berry borer has been spreading gradually and is now present in almost all the tracts of the traditional coffee growing region. From 2001 to 2009 the annual average spread is around 6.5%, the paper claimed.
In fact, in November 1992, the pest act was invoked by the central government, specifically restricting the movement of coffee from infested areas to uninfested areas. Coffee curing establishments were identified and the coffee growers from berry borer-affected areas were advised to process their coffee only in these curing establishments.
Arabica harvesting in India is completed each year within a narrow window of a few months, usually from December to January. In most cases it does not take more than two months. Hence, as the coffee berries remain for a shorter time on the plants from the time of bean hardening to ripening, the incidence of berry borer is much less on Arabica.
But in the case of Robusta, harvesting takes more time as the berries ripen more slowly and so the incidence is more as the berry borer completes several more generations.
