Sayote virus ravaging RP’s ‘vegetable salad bowl’

LA TRINIDAD, Benguet — A virus ravaging sayote or Mirliton squash is fast infecting vast tracts of vegetable farms in Northern Benguet province, touted as the country’s "vegetable salad bowl".

Plant pathologists at the government-run Benguet State University (BSU) even raise fears that the sayote plant whose fruit and leaves go well with Cordillera’s chicken dish called pinikpikan or simply sautéed or made into salad might not be around in the next 10 years.

Dr. Julius Ligat, director of BSU’s Institute of Highland Farming Systems and Agroforestry, said that more than 1,000 hectares of sayote farms are being ravaged by the viral infestation called "sayote mosaic tymovirus," which wilts the plant until it dies.

Experts at the BSU first discovered the virus in their research on sayote from 1996 to 2003. It was published in a book entitled Sayote Research and Development.

Kibungan town is the most affected in the last eight years, followed by La Trinidad, Atok and even Baguio City.

The infection’s symptoms include leaf crinkling with yellow spots, leaf deformation, and necrosis at cupping.

Tymovirus, according to virology research by experts in Central America, is common among potatoes and other plants of the same family.

The genus tymovirus comprises at least 20 species of plant viruses transmitted by beetles and occasionally by seed.

BSU experts claim that the viral infection was aggravated by common growers’ practice of leaf thinning, weeding, irrigation at fertilization.

Ligat told farmers that instead of only removing the infected leaves, it should be burned because the virus is active in the leaves for a month.

He added that farmers should plant alnus trees around the sayote plantations because the tree contains nitrogen that naturally kills the virus.

Benguet farmers are acknowledging the problem and admit incurring losses as vegetable traders are not buying low class sayote fruits.