A review of current management strategies for controlling black pod disease in Malaysia
2021
Mohd Zafri Ab Wahab | Siti Nur Arifah Ibrahim
Black pod is a major destructive disease for the cocoa plantation in Malaysia. The symptoms on the cocoa pod were necrotic lesions of black or brown colour on the pod. It became severe when the growing area of cocoa had high rainfall intensity and high humidity. Hence, these studies aim to discuss the current management controls that can be used to manage the black pod disease in Malaysia, and their impact for both biological and chemical control. This review found the use of synthetic fungicides based on copper and metalaxyl was successful to control black pod disease, but it gave a bad impact to the environment such as high toxicity level residue in the soil. Meanwhile, biological control agent, Trichoderma spp. and endophytic bacteria were successful and effective in inhibiting the Phytophthora palmivora and Phytophthora megakarya on cocoa pod, based on previous studies. This control can be the alternative way to reduce the losses in yield due to disease infection and improve the condition of the environment compared to the chemical control, which produced high toxicity levels and the resistance of the disease which could lead to the disease outbreak. The issue with biological control is that it is difficult to commercialise owing to the long amount of time required to generate high-rate successful inhibition, but it can produce positive long-term side effects on the development of the cocoa plant and on the environment. For recommendation, this strategy should be improved and encouraged as one of the main strategies for reducing the rate of black pod cocoa.
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