Benguet town turns yellow due to pest

BAGUIO CITY -- The potato capital of Buguias in northern Benguet has practically turned yellow for the past two months as farmers wage a fight against the dreaded potato-attacking "leaf miner."

Aside from their yellowed potato farms, residents of the vegetable-growing upland town have been bringing all their yellow-colored items out in the open to attract the attention of the voracious "leaf miners" which started burrowing into the leaves of their potato plants in December, and eventually killed off all their affected potato plants.

Regional Director Libertito Feliciano of the Department of Agriculture in the Cordillera Administrative Region (DA-CAR) explained to The STAR that the leaf miners have a liking for the wrinkled potato leaves -- and potato leaves only -- and for the color yellow. He, however, could not tell how the insects -- which suddenly swooped down on Benguet's highest-elevated vegetable gardens around Christmas-time--reached Benguet.

But internet data came to the rescue of the DAR-CAR when all available pesticides -- chemical and organic -- failed to shoo away the Liriomyza huidobrensis, the small insects which were first noted in Brazil in 1926, and whose larvae burrow (or mine) into the leaves, while the adult females puncture the leaves before they law their eggs.

The internet advice: Leaf miners love yellow.