InfoSAWIT, JAKARTA - There are many kinds of ganoderma. For example, in North Sumatera, there is Ganoderma boninense, in Malaysia there is Ganoderma miniatocinctum, and Ganoderma australis, Ganoderma zonatum and others.
The kinds are not the important thing to know but if the fruiting body or basidioscarp is found in a good tree and shows the symptoms mentioned above, one thing for sure, the ganoderma is parasite (pathogen). It needs to send the fruit too the laboratory to analyze the ganoderma to have DNA test.
One thing to notice is that when taking, handling, and delivering or transporting the sample, it needs to be cleaned from the contaminant and not every laboratory has facility to analyze ganoderma. If it has, it would be for internal only. It needs to communicate with the laboratory.
Census, The Level of Attack and The Spread
To know the spread of ganoderma and the level of attack, it needs to do detail census per tree. One difficulty to do census is the first symptom which is very difficult to identify.
So it needs the skillful workers and the census should be done once in every six months or 2 rotations per year. In the census, the first is that there should be information about the category of attack, as it is explained above.
The second, information of the attacked parts, the basal stem rot (BSR) is generally spread from the root contact and upper stem rot (USR) which spread through the spore. To do treatment or prevention, it is important to differentiate the BSR and USR.
First Symptom and Identification
Actually, to know the first attack of ganoderma, it could be identified by the symptom. There are four symptoms to identify, they are,
- 3 or more spear leaves are not open when the tree is not lack of water (score 1)
- 3 or more spear leaves are not open when the tree is not lack of water and the lower part of the midrib is naturally sengkleh (score 2)
- 3 or more spear leaves are not open when the tree is not lack of water and the lower part of the midrib is naturally sengkleh and fungus (the body of fruit/basidioscarp) is found (score 3)
- 3 or more spear leaves are not open when the tree is not lack of water and the lower part of the midrib is naturally sengkleh and fungus (the body of fruit/basidioscarp) is found and every midrib is sengkleh except the spear leaf (score 4)
- 3 or more spear leaves are not open when the tree is not lack of water and the lower part of the midrib is naturally sengkleh and fungus (the body of fruit/basidioscarp) is found and fall down (score 5).
By: Marlon Sitanggang/Head of Agronomy Division, PT USTP
Source: Majalah InfoSAWIT, February 2019
