Rice tungro disease in Sarawak: Past and present status

Abstract

Rice Tungro Disease (RTD) is one of the viral diseases which devastated rice production in South and Southeast Asia. Due to the severity of the RTD, close monitoring of this disease is important to ensure the disease does not become widespread and could have a disastrous effect to the paddy fields and farmers. In Sarawak, RTD survey is adopted as a continuous effort to monitor rice cultivars. Five divisions (Kuching, Samarahan, Sarikei, Sibu and Miri) in Sarawak were surveyed and were reported to be positive for RTD in 2012. For the following years in 2013 and 2014, RTD-free scenario was observed for all the eleven divisions in Sarawak except for Bario, Miri division. Besides, our PCR results have aligned with the field observation that the symptoms of RTD are no longer observed in those RTD negative sampling area. The effort of RTD surveillance will be continued for the following years to ensure close monitoring of the disease development and minimization of crop lose by taking appropriate eradication actions.