IPM/
Storage
Cowpeas in storage after harvest are plagued by an insect called cowpea weevil. Grain brought into the granary at the time of harvest often has small numbers of cowpea weevil eggs or larvae associated with it. These quickly develop into adults that mate and lay more eggs - each adult female produces as many as 40-60 eggs. These soon hatch into larvae which become adults in three or four weeks. They mate and lay eggs, etc. Soon the cowpea store is ravaged, and is alive with thousands of insects. The Bean/Cowpea CRSP cowpea storage project developed a number of tools and technologies for fostering weevil-free long-tern storage of cowpea grain. Solar disinfestation uses a simple plastic device to capture the sun's rays and heat the cowpea grain to a temperature high enough to kill the eggs, larvae, pupae and adults in the grain. The simple solar heater can treat 50-60 kg of threshed grain at a time, and can be used many times. It is cheap, economical, easy to learn and to use, uses no chemicals at all, and is environmentally friendly. It is also totally effective in stopping an infestation in its tracks. Triple bagging relies on the hermetic effect of storing dry, threshed cowpea grain in plastic bags, one within the other. This technology will arrest an infestation for months, although it doesn't kill the insects inside the grain. Improved ash storage involves mixing infested cowpea grain with an equal volume of seived wood ash from cooking fires. This was a traditional technique that the CRSP project observed in Cameroon, researched systematically, and improved. The principle is this: by packing the ash and the grain tightly together, the insects living within the seeds are trapped there, and can never emerge to mate and reproduce.
• Storage
• Field
