Enset root mealybug

scattered plants lose their deep green and turn pale and yellow, the leaves wilt and droop even when the soil isn't bone-dry, and growth slows and stunts. The plant loses its vigour and the corm stays small — and the trouble shows worst in the dry season. A sick plant looks like it is slowly starving.

scrape the soil away from the corm base and the top roots and look for white, waxy, powdery colonies — as if the roots have been dusted with flour or ash, or wrapped in white cotton or mould. The insects under the wax are tiny, soft and oval, the size of a rice grain or smaller, whitish to pink, slow-moving and wingless. You will often see ants running to and from the colonies.

with plain drought or hungry (poor) soil, which yellow and wilt plants too — but those hit the whole patch evenly and leave the roots clean. Root mealybug hits scattered plants and always shows the white powder and ants on the roots. Root-knot nematodes make knots and swellings on the roots but no white powder; and root mould is fine, still threads, while mealybugs are insects in white wax that move, usually with ants around them.

check at the two moments that matter most — every time you lift or plant a sucker (at transplanting), and whenever a standing plant starts to yellow, wilt or stunt through its long growing and maturing years. The pest builds up most in the dry season and on drier soils, so scout harder then.

walk a big "W" across your enset so you cover all four corners and the middle, not just the plants beside the path. Make about 10 stops, and choose the sickest-looking (yellow or stunted) plants to check first.

with a stick or hand hoe, scrape the soil from the corm base and top roots and look for the white waxy colonies and for ant trails running down to the base. To check a sucker, peel back the outer sheath and look at its base and root buds.

this pest spreads so easily that even ONE plant or ONE sucker with white waxy colonies means act now — don't wait for many. Never plant a sucker that carries any white powdery colonies, and mark every infested standing plant so you can pull it out.

plant only clean, inspected suckers taken from healthy gardens with no history of this pest. Never carry suckers or soil from a sick garden to clean ground — moving infested planting material is the main way the mealybug travels.

pare (trim away) the outer layers and old roots from the corm, then dip or hot-water-treat the cleaned suckers and corms to kill any mealybugs hiding on them before they go in the ground. Follow your local extension officer's guidance for the safe hot-water method.

rogue (dig out and destroy) heavily infested plants — burn or bury them far away, corm and roots and all, so they can't reinfest. Because ants protect and carry the mealybug (they feed on its sugary waste, called honeydew), break up their nests and trails around the corm base. On badly infested ground, fallow (rest the land with no enset) or rotate to another crop for a season or more to starve the pest out.

you can dip suckers or drench the corm base with an approved systemic insecticide — systemic means the plant draws the product up inside its own sap, so it can reach the mealybugs feeding hidden on the roots (a plain surface spray cannot). Safety: wear gloves and cover your skin, eyes, nose and mouth; keep the product and the treated material away from food, drinking water, children, animals and bees; wash your hands and clothes afterwards; and follow the label dose and the pre-harvest interval (the number of days you must wait between treating and harvesting so the chemical has faded). To slow resistance (the pest slowly stops dying to a poison used again and again), rotate to a different chemical group each time instead of using the same one.

stop taking any suckers from that garden, and start your next planting on clean, rested land with clean, treated suckers from a healthy garden. When a plant is too far gone — badly stunted and mostly dead — dig it out completely and destroy it rather than leaving it as a source, and don't move its soil or suckers to healthy ground. Rebuilding from clean material on clean land beats fighting a pest already deep in the soil.